Synopsys has announced the results of a collaboration with TSMC under TSMC’s Unified Design-for-Manufacturing (UDFM) architecture effort. Synopsys said that this collaboration is expected to enable designers improve yields and accelerate time to market through lithography simulation at 28 nanometer (nm) and below.
According to Synopsys, as a result of this joint effort, designers will have access to the same technology that is in production at TSMC. The product also offers a 28-nm lithography process checking (LPC) engine which includes Synopsys Proteus mask synthesis technology and TSMC process models.
Using an interoperable applications programming interface (API), EDA design tools can reportedly interface with the LPC engine to predict lithography hotspots in a given design before handing-off the designs to manufacturing.
ST Juang, senior director of Design Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC, said: TSMC is laying the groundwork for 28-nm process technologies and below with the industry’s first Unified DFM (UDFM) framework and LPC engine, which is destined to become an important consideration. At those nodes, it will be exceedingly difficult for design tools to accurately assess lithography issues without access to an exact copy of our tool chain and process models. TSMC UDFM’s ‘copy exact’ approach will not only provide actual lithography hotspot data to designers, but will also open the door for all EDA vendors by enabling encapsulated access to a large part of our manufacturing data.
Synopsys said that, currently, the only way for design tools to access proprietary foundry data is through abstracted models, which by necessity lose information in the translation process. In comparison, using the new approach based on the encapsulated LPC engine, TSMC can provide EDA DFM tools access to the TSMC Unified DFM Design Kit (DDK) that includes an exact copy of the tool chain and process models used in the factory.
Saleem Haider, senior director of marketing for physical design and DFM at Synopsys, said: With UDFM and a LPC engine, Synopsys and TSMC enable designers to perform more accurate lithography analysis. With copy-exact accuracy, designers can be confident that they are neither sacrificing chip area, nor wasting time in fixing false hotspots.
