Amber FX is built on top of the Amber^TM Analyzer, introduced in May 2007. It merges the performance of the Amber fully threaded, incremental analysis architecture with the accuracy of a new generation FX transistor model (FXM). The result is near SPICE-level accuracy for timing delay and process variance,

Accurate Transistor Modeling
Manufacturing variance is one of the biggest barriers to successful adoption of advanced 45-nm and 40-nm process nodes. Although the expectation is that these nodes will deliver much better speed and power at a lower cost per die, traditional corner-based timing closure methodologies are much too pessimistic and make timing closure very difficult. Amber FX supplies a FX transistor model that captures delay and variance directly from SPICE, the foundry SPICE model, and the SPICE netlists for each of the cells. The Amber FXM library is a cell-level library that includes all of the transistors and parasitics for each cell. Amber FXM has been qualified with TSMC 65-nm and 40-nm libraries using Berkeley SPICE and HSPICE for characterization. FXM is an extension to the Liberty format and addresses a large number of known accuracy problems in existing Liberty, ECSM, and CCSM libraries.

Amber FX Transistor STA is used for block and full-chip transistor timing and signal integrity analysis. It uses the FXM model to perform STA with traditional corners for very high accuracy timing, and allows users to combine non-linear delay models with transistor models. Amber FX Transistor SSTA is used for path-based TSSTA with the FXM model. Corners are replaced with a statistical distribution for the timing, which represents the potential manufacturing variance as tracked and analyzed by the foundry. Users first complete a baseline static timing run and then select a set of paths for full transistor-level SSTA. The nominal delay and variance of these paths is then recalculated using the FXM model and delay calculator. For the purposes of reporting, the variance is treated as a normal distribution so timing can be assessed at multiple points.

Pricing and Availability
Amber FX Transistor STA and Amber FX Transistor SSTA are shipping today for 32-bit and 64-bit Linux computing platforms. The U.S. list price for a one-year license is $150,000 for Amber FX STA and $150,000 for Amber FX SSTA.