[Engineering Essentials]
Analog/Full-Custom Flows Move Toward Interoperability
The IPL Initiative seeks to bring openness, and with it greater productivity, to the creation of PCells and process design kits for full-custom design.
With regard to legacy SKILL PCells, the IPL flow provides an answer as well. PCell Xtreme caches the layout of the SKILL PCell so any OpenAccess tool can access it. It also enables tools to instantiate (place or parameterize) a SKILL PCell by doing something very clever: It sends the parameterization request back to Virtuoso to allow SKILL to interpret it, then caches the result and presents that to the third-party tool.
Another element of the IPL mechanism comes from Silicon Navigator, whose RDE Framework provides a full GUI for viewing a variety of data such as netlists, schematics, layout, floor-plans, routing, congestion, design hierarchy, PCells, and critical timing paths. The RDE Framework is designed to be compatible with other OpenAccess-based tools. Silicon Navigator has worked with Cadence, Si2, Intel, Ciranova, and others to further the Si2 standard and ensure that an investment in using RDE Framework's infrastructure will last well into the next decade.
Whether the IPL Initiative's work will ultimately succeed is yet to be determined. Foundries still need to agree that the interoperable PCells at least equal the quality of the traditional variety. The IPL library has yet to meet foundry approvals and qualifications.
"That's our next step in IPL, getting the foundries involved," says Ed Lechner, director of product marketing at Synopsys. "At a first order, it's PCell developers that experience the pain of non-standardization. That's the CAD groups in the large IDMs and the fabless semiconductor houses. The foundries experience it, and EDA vendors do, because we have to create the kits ourselves for the foundries to endorse."
"End users don't directly benefit from this," Lechner points out. "That's why it's been such a challenge to get momentum going."
The IPL Initiative's members are banking on their collective resources resulting in a flow that's "much more rich than what Cadence is providing today," as Yatin Trivedi, director of product marketing at Magma, put it. "If competition is any indication of how the tools improve, in that case, even Cadence's tools will continue to improve. And even if Cadence continues to be the dominant player in the marketplace, all the users will benefit from this effort."
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