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    Wednesday, June 03, 2009

    EDA Standardization: The Next Wave Is Here!

    In one of my earlier posts (EDA Standards I'd Love To See) , I argued for a standard for interconnect extraction rule from that will be used by the extraction tool. I quote:

    "There are only so many things one expects to be present in an RC Deck. These values, much like in DRC decks, are constant for a given process. It can't be hard to develop a common extraction rules format. Vendors can still add value via the speed and accuracy of their RC estimation algorithms."

    TSMC has now developed a common RC extraction deck format called iRCX that can be used as the input for all RC extraction tools. The utopian promise: RC tools all support the same standard for rules and compete on accuracy and runtime. According the press release, this standard is the first of many to come (I' m expecting that DRC & LVS rule formats are next in line).

    4 comments:

    1. Will TSMC make this a formal, accredited standard through the IEEE, for instance? Or do you think they'll keep it as their own proprietary standard?

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    2. One hopes that TSMC will follow Synopsys's example (UPF) and turns the format into a standard. Hard to say what TSMC's view is. It might be a competitive advantage for TSMC to have a common set of standards for its process alone but, realistically, large-scale adoption will occur only if the standard is published, reviewed and standardized.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Anonymous11:36 AM

      take a look at this...

      http://www.facebook.com/pages/science-technology/460109355654?ref=mf

      :)

      ReplyDelete
    4. The hope is that TSMC will follow the example of Synopsys (UPF) and turns into a standard format. Hard to say which view TSMC. It can be a competitive advantage for TSMC to have a common set of standards for the process alone, but realistically, widespread adoption will occur only if the standard is published, reviewed and standardized.

      ReplyDelete