SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Attenuator, a tool that automatically identifies and removes antennas, has been announced by Gambit Automated Design Inc. The company also introduced its next-generation floor planner, called Forecast.

"There are sophisticated parasitic-extraction tools on the market that can find antenna violations, but this is the first tool that can fix them and it does it automatically," said Michael Burstein, Gambit's cofounder and chief technical officer.

Run as a design-rule check after place-and-route and before parasitic extraction, Attenuator detects and removes static charges that accumulate at input gates of transistors when there is no path to discharge that static until the final metal layer is fabricated.

Krishna Balachandran, director of technical marketing at Gambit, said the ultimate value of the tool is that it can dramatically reduce the number of iterative loops in physical verification.

"Typically, engineers spend a lot of time trying to find antenna violations and even more time fixing them," said Balachandran. "Traditionally, [when] you have to look for antenna violations in a layout environment, you superimpose your GDS II results from, say, a Dracula run, look at each violation in the layout editor and do exhaustive polygon-pushing. You then run the entire process over and over until no violations occur. But, with this tool, we are saving people a lot of time by automating the process."

Balachandran said that in the Gambit flow, engineers feed the tool the rules for the targeted foundry's process and a router database such as a DEF file. The tool then fixes violations within the place-and-route system, so that when the GDS II leaves the system it is clean. Engineers only have to run the tool once.

Gambit also announced its Forecast floor planner, which is claimed to offer a tight link to static timing tools.

"Forecast works with static timing tools to give engineers timing estimates right at the beginning of the place-and-route process, so you don't have any surprises at the end of the design cycle," said Balachandran.

The new gate-level, post-synthesis floor planner, which replaces the Gambit Floorplanner (GFP), features partitioning and region-and-block placement.

It evaluates the floor plan, gives timing estimates and optimizes the floor plan for routability.

Balachandran said the tool is optimized to work in conjunction with the company's OnTime static timing analyzer and its GrandMaster place-and-route tool. The tool can also run with third-party tools, but there is no guarantee of quality of results, said Balachandran.

The tool accepts EDIF net-lists and Verilog from a synthesis output; DEF, and LEF and GDS II libraries; and timing information, such as Synopsys libraries, timing libraries and SDF constraints.

In the Gambit scheme of things, engineers use OnTime to identify timing violations and then correct most of the violations with Forecast. Engineers then use Forecast's link-to-synthesis feature to reoptimize the synthesis for better timing. After creating a floor plan, the tool can generate region- or block-based wire-load models. Those models can then be communicated to Synopsys' Design Compiler synthesis tool to reoptimize the design based on actual physical estimates.

The tool's hierarchy browser and modifier permit engineers to make changes to the hierarchy, resulting in better global placement of the regions, thereby improving routability and timing.

Attenuator is priced at $30,000, running on Unix. Gambit will release a Windows NT version of the tool in the latter part of the third quarter. The NT tool will be priced at $21,000.

Two configurations
Forecast comes in two configurations: Forecast Pro and Forecast Expert. The minimum configuration, Forecast Pro, is priced at $35,000 for a two-year lease running on Unix. Forecast Expert, which features additional region and block algorithms, is priced at $85,000 for a two-year lease and also runs on Unix.

The company also offers two versions of Forecast specifically targeted for Oki Semiconductor customers. Forecast Basic is priced at $15,000 for a two-year license. Forecast Plus, which features additional region and block algorithms, is priced at $50,000 for the same lease period. Both tools run on Unix.

Gambit said it plans to release NT versions of both tools in the the third quarter.