editor's blog
Subscribe Now

Sophisticated Variation Modeling

As a newly-developed process is prepared for delivery into the production world, one of the last things that has to happen to effect a transition is the development of compact models for use in design simulation. And, of course, these days, such a model must account for process variations, which means covering the wide range of corners that a process can have to capture the statistics.

We’ve seen some of this before with Solido, but according to newcomer GSS, whom my colleague Dick Selwood explored at some length back when GSS was getting started, most other tools model processes as Gaussian, and the world isn’t actually Gaussian. Also, the existing tools help with simulation, but they don’t create a model.

Well, GSS has now released their tool. It works as a “wrapper” to a simulator, as these tools are wont to do. So it doesn’t do the actual simulation; you pick whatever simulator you want to work with, along with the circuit and model strategy, and the GSS tool creates the corners to be run – on the order of a couple thousand runs. Because of the independence of the runs, this scales perfectly with additional processors; you specify the number of processors and it handles the load management.

It then builds a model with statistical features that no other models have; the model itself has time-dependent capabilities for characteristics that evolve over time. In this manner, they say that it bridges TCAD and production EDA in a way that no other tool does.

They announced their tool in a somewhat indirect fashion, focusing on the possibility of unforeseen SRAM yield issues at the 20-nm node. You can see more about the details of that discussion in their release.

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Sep 21, 2023
Wireless communication in workplace wearables protects and boosts the occupational safety and productivity of industrial workers and front-line teams....
Sep 21, 2023
Labforge is a Waterloo, Ontario-based company that designs, builds, and manufactures smart cameras used in industrial automation and defense applications. By bringing artificial intelligence (AI) into their vision systems with Cadence , they can automate tasks that are diffic...
Sep 21, 2023
At Qualcomm AI Research, we are working on applications of generative modelling to embodied AI and robotics, in order to enable more capabilities in robotics....
Sep 21, 2023
Not knowing all the stuff I don't know didn't come easy. I've had to read a lot of books to get where I am....
Sep 21, 2023
See how we're accelerating the multi-die system chip design flow with partner Samsung Foundry, making it easier to meet PPA and time-to-market goals.The post Samsung Foundry and Synopsys Accelerate Multi-Die System Design appeared first on Chip Design....

Featured Video

Chiplet Architecture Accelerates Delivery of Industry-Leading Intel® FPGA Features and Capabilities

Sponsored by Intel

With each generation, packing millions of transistors onto shrinking dies gets more challenging. But we are continuing to change the game with advanced, targeted FPGAs for your needs. In this video, you’ll discover how Intel®’s chiplet-based approach to FPGAs delivers the latest capabilities faster than ever. Find out how we deliver on the promise of Moore’s law and push the boundaries with future innovations such as pathfinding options for chip-to-chip optical communication, exploring new ways to deliver better AI, and adopting UCIe standards in our next-generation FPGAs.

To learn more about chiplet architecture in Intel FPGA devices visit https://intel.ly/45B65Ij

featured paper

An Automated Method for Adding Resiliency to Mission-Critical SoC Designs

Sponsored by Synopsys

Adding safety measures to SoC designs in the form of radiation-hardened elements or redundancy is essential in making mission-critical applications in the A&D, cloud, automotive, robotics, medical, and IoT industries more resilient against random hardware failures that occur. This paper discusses the automated process of implementing the safety mechanisms/measures (SM) in the design to make them more resilient and analyze their effectiveness from design inception to the final product.

Click here to read more

featured chalk talk

Advantech Edge Gateways for Equipment Monitoring
Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and Advantech
One of the biggest challenges with equipment monitoring today includes one critical question: How do I integrate multiple data formats from different devices, equipment, meters, and sensors into my system? In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton chats with Eric Wang from Advantech about how the Advantech WISE-EdgeLink solution can help you navigate the challenges of data collection in edge applications. They also take a closer look at the benefits of the Advantech WISE-EdgeLink smart gateway family and show you how to get started using one of these smart gateways in your next edge application. 
Mar 1, 2023
24,942 views