Siemens collaborates with TSMC on design tool certifications

At the TSMC 2024 North America Technology Symposium, Siemens announced that ongoing collaboration with long-time partner TSMC has successfully achieved multiple new product certifications and project milestones for TSMC’s newest and most advanced processes. For mutual customers, these certifications allow the development of innovative and highly differentiated end-products using best-in-class EDA software and industry-leading silicon process and advanced packaging technologies.

“Siemens is pleased to collaborate with TSMC to deliver EDA technologies that provide customers with an expanding number of design avenues, even as time, cost and design complexity pressures continue to rise,” said Mike Ellow, executive vice president, Electronic Design Automation, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “The combination of Siemens’ industry-leading IC design solutions and TSMC’s leading-edge process and advanced packaging technologies enable our many mutual customers to achieve truly remarkable and industry-disrupting innovations.”

Siemens’ Calibre nmPlatform tool, the IC verification industry leader, is now certified for TSMC’s N2 process. Among the Siemens toolsets included in this platform and now N2 certified are Siemens’ Calibre nmDRC software, Calibre nmLVS software, Calibre Pattern Matching software and Calibre PERC software toolsets – all of which are in now place for the earliest adopters of TSMC’s innovative technology.

Siemens’ Analog FastSPICE platform for circuit verification of nanometre analog, RF, mixed-signal, memory, and custom digital circuits recently achieved TSMC certification for the foundry’s advanced N3P, N2 and N2P processes. Further, as part of the custom design reference flow (CDRF) for TSMC’s N2 processes, Siemens’ Analog FastSPICE platform now supports TSMC’s Reliability Aware Simulation technology, which addresses IC ageing and real-time self-heating effects among other advanced reliability features. The CDRF for TSMC’s N2 technology also includes Siemens’ Solido Design Environment software for advanced variation-aware verification at high sigma.

From a 3D-IC perspective, Siemens and TSMC successfully collaborated to certify Siemens’ Calibre 3DSTACK solution’s support for the foundry’s latest 3Dblox standard. This certification continues the partners’ ongoing collaboration on thermal analysis requirements for TSMC‘s 3DFabric advanced packaging technologies. 

 Further, the companies have collaborated to unlock the full potential of Siemens’ Tessent software for 3D-IC design-for-test (DFT) implementations for the benefit of TSMC ecosystem customers and partners at advanced nodes. TSMC and Siemens are working together to develop new 3D-DFT methodologies, including Known Good Die (KGD) loopback testing and physical aware die-to-die fault testing and diagnosis, by leveraging the 3Dblox standard to address the special IC test and diagnosis challenges that arise at 2nm geometries and below.

“Siemens has been a long-time, strategic partner and continues to increase its value to the TSMC Open Innovation Platform (OIP) ecosystem by offering more high-quality solutions in support of our newest leading-edge technologies,” said Dan Kochpatcharin, head of the Design Infrastructure Management Division at TSMC. “We look forward to seeing even more innovations as we continue to further grow our strong and highly-valued partnership that helps to enable our customers’ leadership in HPC and AI by bringing to market even more differentiated semiconductor designs.”