Hi Bryon, Your readers should be aware that multiple customers are using Mentor Calibre in the physical verification and extraction portions of their MEMS designs. To that point, there is a white paper authored by Mentor and Freescale on how Freescale uses Calibre in their MEMS designs(http://go.mentor.com/3yxal).
When it comes to DRC, there are some unique aspects of MEMS, not the least of which is the need to accurately handle curves. This is quite different than verification of ICs, which use rectilinear shapes, or so-called Manhattan topology, and can really throw DRC tools into a tizzy, resulting in slow runtimes and potentially thousands of false violations.
Calibre nmDRC helps mitigate this problem via Calibre eqDRC, a capability that allows designers to create an equation based check that allows checking of curved designs. On the extraction side, MEMS designers like the Calibre xACT field solver extraction technology because it works directly on the physics of the design using Maxwell’s equations—that is, designers can not only get very accurate results, but they are able to get started doing extraction analysis much faster, as set up is much faster vs developing a look-up table solution.
