A smarter way to solve characterisation challenges

SiliconSmart ADV’s licensing approach adjusts easily to varying workload profiles, eliminating the burden on characterisation teams to predict future workload requirements and operate within the constraints of traditionally cumbersome licensing methods. In addition, SiliconSmart technologies utilise embedded gold reference SPICE engines to provide a characterisation speed-up for generating advanced Liberty models used by PrimeTime static timing analysis (STA) to accurately account for effects seen in ultra-low voltage FinFET processes that impact timing. This includes PrimeTime parametric on-chip variation (POCV), advanced waveform propagation (AWP) and electromigration (EM) analysis.

“Synopsys works with leading semiconductor companies to understand and solve characterisation challenges in a broader context that encompasses unpredictable workloads, large compute environments and complicated production characterisation flows spanning many tools,” said Robert Hoogenstryd, Senior Director of Product Marketing for the Design Group at Synopsys. “SiliconSmart ADV’s unified licensing offers a new and smarter approach to solving these problems compared to the cumbersome approach of traditional characterisation products.”

SiliconSmart ADV provides, with a single license, everything needed for library characterisation and QA of the most advanced standard cell libraries. For the best accuracy with the fastest throughput, SiliconSmart ADV includes embedded Synopsys FineSim SPICE and embedded Synopsys HSPICE circuit simulation solutions.

It also offers flexible multi-core licensing to optimise throughput in compute farm environments and enable easy adaptation to constantly changing characterisation needs. SiliconSmart ADV’s comprehensive Liberty Variation Format (LVF) characterisation and modelling capabilities enable PrimeTime POCV variation analysis.

Support for the latest Liberty EM model extensions is also included for cell level EM characterisation. SiliconSmart ADV also provides a suite of tools to accelerate the manual and error prone QA process for sign-off quality libraries. The entire library qualification process is automatically parallelised to provide quick turnaround time and identify problems early on. Visualisation aids and intelligently organised results help to quickly isolate problem areas and provide QA management metrics.