GlobalFoundries shows 28-nm AMS design kit

LONDON – Foundry chip maker GlobalFoundries Inc. is making a 28-nm analog/mixed-signal (AMS) design flow development kit available to customers, the company said at the opening of its Global Technology Conference in Santa Clara, California.

GlobalFoundries (Sunnyvale, Calif.) teamed with EDA software vendor Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif. to deliver this AMS design flow.

The flow encompasses analog block design and mixed signal design and covers the management of parasitic effects, rapid layout prototyping, analog layout guidelines and routing, choice of simulation corner cases, inductor synthesis and EM/IR analysis.

It is augmented with whitepapers and collateral on common challenges and GlobalFoundries-recommended fixes. It also incorporates top-level physical signoff steps for manufacturing using GlobalFoundries' 28-nm requirements for DRC, lithography simulation and CMP.

The AMS flow is designed to make use of features of GlobalFoundries' "gate-first" high-k metal-gate technology. The flow includes silicon-driven guidelines and recommendations for better manufacturability. Customers for the kit gain access to IP, libraries, reference kits and other foundry information. GlobalFoundries will also support DRC+, a system that uses two-dimensional shape-based pattern-matching to identify hard-to-manufacture structures. It does this 100 times faster than conventional methods, GlobalFoundries claimed.

The major elements of the AMS production design flow are due for completion in Q3 2010, with all of the flow steps supported by the GlobalFoundries physical design kit for 28-nm production. The reference flow contains PCells that enable advanced features within the Cadence Virtuoso design tools. The complete production-level AMS flow is expected to be released to customers in Q4 2010, with silicon validation scheduled for early 2011.

Related links and articles:

www.globalfoundries.com

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