Numerical Technologies Inc. has beefed up its Cadabra automated cell-creation product line with two tools that streamline library generation for designs implemented in new silicon processes.

Anjaneya Thakar, vice president of technology licensing, said the new abraMAP tool targets library developers and chip design teams wishing to do quick and easy process-migration changes. Whereas the flagship abraCAD product of the Cadabra line performs detailed changes to cells and an entire standard-cell design layout, abraMAP lets users implement quick changes to specific cells or layouts to accommodate new process-migration rules "without having to go back to the placement of transistors and routing."

The second new tool, abraKazam, is actually a tightly integrated packaging of the abraMAP tool with AbraCAD, Thakar said. If a problem can't be quickly fixed with abraMAP, the abraCAD process-migration half of the tool can be invoked to solve it.

Cadabra users enter GDSII designs in the abraPlan utility that comes with all Cadabra line tools. The GUI-based utility allows capture of, among other things, the common architecture that underlies all the user's cells. Designers also use abraPlan to capture design rules graphically.

Once the cell architecture is captured and design rules are defined, users feed the source GDSII netlist into abraMAP. The tool decomposes the layouts into devices-MOSFETs, contacts, wires and power rails-understood by the tool. If the design rules specify, for example, that bent gates cannot be used in the new process, the tool will automatically straighten them out, taking such actions as limiting or removing diodes. It then performs a DRC/LVS-compliant compaction.

If abraMAP can't fix a given problem, such as removing or hitting the correct grid, the tool will automatically call the AbraCAD technology in abraKazam to fix the problem.

If the user knows that a part of a layout must be addressed by the AbraCAD half of the tool, the user can assign that portion to abraCAD and simultaneously have the rest of the design run through abraMAP.

Both tools are available immediately. Time-based licensing for abraMAP begins at $60,000 per year; abraKazam begins at $140,000. Numerical Technologies offers existing abraCAD users an upgrade path to abraKazam.

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ARM has licensed the ARM926EJ-S, ARM946E and ARM1020E microprocessor cores to Samsung, which said it will use the cores in systems-on-chip.

In a separate announcement, ARM said it has licensed the ARM946E-S, ARM966E-S core and Embedded Trace Macrocell (ETM9) to Marvell for use in that company's next-generation DSP-based mixed-signal devices.

Samsung will use the ARM cores in products for mobile-computing, networking, media and printer applications. It will also use the cores to provide complex SoC solutions to customers developing their own devices. In particular, the ARM1020E core will be used to implement standard products based on Samsung's 0.13-micron process.

Marvell products based on ARM cores will supply OEMs in the communications and storage markets.