SAN JOSE, CALIF., June 14, 2010 — Magma® Design Automation (Nasdaq: LAVA), a provider of chip design software, today announced that United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TSE: 2303) (“UMC”) has qualified QuickCap® NX as a reference parasitic extraction tool for 40- and 65-nanometer (nm) process technology.
QuickCap NX is a proven 3D extractor that precisely models advanced process effects required by today’s nanometer extraction requirements, such as optical proximity correction (OPC), chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP), intermetal dielectric (IMD) variation, damage model and width-dependent temperature coefficients.
The UMC qualification process involved complex test structures, such as ring oscillators, as well as critical nets on real designs. In each case, QuickCap NX delivered fast runtimes without compromising accuracy.
“UMC strives to provide its customers with leading-edge design and manufacturing solutions that help ensure silicon success,” said Stephen Fu, division director of IP development and design support at UMC. “QuickCap NX meets customers’ needs in parasitic extraction, and we are happy to add this tool to our design resource portfolio.”
“UMC offers some of the most advanced 40-nm volume production technologies in the world,” said Premal Buch, general manager of Magma’s Design Implementation Business Unit. “Qualifying Magma’s 3D field solver reinforces QuickCap NX as the gold standard in parasitic extraction.”
QuickCap NX: The Gold Standard in Parasitic Extraction
QuickCap NX is used by major semiconductor companies as the reference standard for parasitic extraction. It is proven to closely correlate to exact analytical solutions and silicon measurements, delivering capacitance values within 1 percent of silicon measurements. It provides dial-in accuracy and error-bounds reporting on each net, giving the user complete control and trust in the accuracy of results.
Leading foundries have validated QuickCap NX’s ability to more closely match silicon measurements. By taking process effects into account, the average difference between QuickCap NX capacitance values and actual silicon measurements has been reduced from 9.79 percent to 0.11 percent.
QuickCap NX can be used for post-layout analysis in the Magma flow. QuickCap technology is also incorporated into the Talus® physical design software system to support highly accurate timing and noise analysis during chip implementation. It is used to compute the highly accurate capacitance rules used within Talus and the Quartz™ RC sign-off extraction tool.
Magma will demonstrate its entire line of chip design software in Booth 602 at the 47th Design Automation Conference (DAC) June 14-16 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim. For information on Magma’s activities at DAC, visit www.magma-da.com/DAC2010.
About Magma
Magma’s electronic design automation (EDA) software provides the “Fastest Path to Silicon”™ and enables the world’s top chip companies to create high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) for cellular telephones, electronic games, WiFi, MP3 players, digital video, networking and other electronic applications. Magma products are used in IC implementation, analog/mixed-signal design, analysis, physical verification, circuit simulation and characterization. The company maintains headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and offices throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Asia and India. Magma’s stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Follow Magma on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/MagmaEDA and on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/Magma. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.
