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S San Jose, CA | March 10, 2010
Insert CompanyLogo Here
Copyright 2010 Magma Design Automation, Inc.
A 65 nm Design Tape-Out in 6 Weeks
Andreas Olofsson and Roman TroganAdapteva Inc.
2Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
Project Description
• Design:− Multi-million gate ASIC with > 50 hard
macros and hundreds of high speed IO− 65nm high speed process node with 9
metal layers− Very aggressive frequency and power
targets• Flow:− An all Magma tools flow from RTL to GDS
• Resources:− 1 engineer for RTL, DV, Synthesis, and
Layout, Analysis, and Tape-out• Schedule:− 6 weeks from tool purchase order to
tapeout
TALUS DESIGN
TALUS VORTEX
QUARTZ DRC/LVS
TALUS ANALYSIS
TAPEOUT
3Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
FLATAdvantages: Easy floor-planning Less work? Smaller chip area? Great for junk collection
Disadvantages: Tool capacity!!! Slooooow iterations!!!
HIERARCHICALAdvantages: Determinism Super fast iterations Scalable
Disadvantages: More work? Tedious floor-planning Tool support?
Decisions, decisions, decisions...
4Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
TFMAdvantages: Quick rampup time Magma supported
Disadvantages: Abstraction Black-box dilemma Fix turnaround time
HomegrownAdvantages: Customization
Disadvantages: Higher risk Longer rampup time!!
More decisions...
6Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
Tiled Flow Lesson #1
Lesson: For symmetrical architectures tiled hierarchical flows work beautifully (hint..design with symmetry)
• One symmetrical core block:− Small and manageable blocks− The key was careful pin
planning− High utilization− Aggressive timing constraints − Correct by design block to
block communication
7Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
You can't scale without symmetry!!
8Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
Tiled Flow Lesson #2
Lesson: Know when to flatten design and when to use hierarchical design techniques
• Mistake:− Trying to connect everything by
abutment− Hierarchical not ideal for
asymmetric blocks with hedgehog interfaces (i.e IO)
− Blocks with 50:1 aspect ratio should be flattened!
• Next time:− A little flatter... BLOCKA BLOCKBPIN_MATCH
9Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
Tiled Flow Lesson #3
Lesson: Don't fight the tools!
• Tool limitations:− TALUS wouldn't connect
our tieoffs correctly now matter how hard we tried
− Short point to point routing that wasn't on grid was a disaster.
• Solution:− Simple tcl scripts for
point to point routing
10Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
TFM and Quartz Report Cards
TFM Very fast rampup time Outstanding support! Pretty buggy initially..but
probably not as buggy as my code would have been
Nice use of a single file for most setup variables
Very flexible Needs to be more
transparent
Quartz LVS/DRC Runsets not available at
start Verification run time not an
issue for our design Fantastic Magma support! Direct Calibre deck read
successful by tapeout time DRC/LVS error correlation
with independent foundry verification
11Insert Company
Logo HereCopyright 2010 Magma Design Automation,
Inc
Summary
Tiled hierarchical design flows are here to stay! Successful tapeout of multi-million gate SOC within
6 weeks of becoming a MAGMA customer 2 weeks from new floor-plan to GDS-clean 12 hour design cycle from RTL change to GDS clean
The TALUS RTL to GDS flow offers the most complete implementation and most efficient flow this engineering has team has seen to date from any vendor.
Don't buy the hype. With the right people and tools SOCs don't have to cost $75M.
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