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Design Flows (EDA)
Design flows are the explicit combination of electronic design automation tools to accomplish the design of an integrated circuit. Moore's law has driven the entire IC implementation RTL to GDSII design flows from one which uses primarily stand-alone synthesis, placement, and routing algorithms to an integrated construction and analysis flows for design closure. The challenges of rising interconnect delay led to a new way of thinking about and integrating design closure tools. The RTL to GDSII flow underwent significant changes from 1980 through 2005. The continued scaling of CMOS technologies significantly changed the objectives of the various design steps. The lack of good predictors for delay has led to significant changes in recent design flows. New scaling challenges such as leakage power, variability, and reliability will continue to require significant changes to the design closure process in the future. Many factors describe what drove the design flow from a set of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronic Design Automation
Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together in a Design flow (EDA), design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. Since a modern semiconductor chip can have billions of components, EDA tools are essential for their design; this article in particular describes EDA specifically with respect to integrated circuits (ICs). History Early days Prior to the development of EDA, integrated circuits were designed by hand and manually laid out. Some advanced shops used geometric software to generate tapes for a Gerber format, Gerber photoplotter, responsible for generating a monochromatic exposure image, but even those copied digital recordings of mechanically drawn components. The process was fundamentally graphic, with the translation f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Automation Conference
The Design Automation Conference, or DAC, is an annual event, a combination of a technical conference and a trade show, both specializing in electronic design automation (EDA). DAC is the oldest and largest conference in EDA, started in 1964. It grew out of the SHARE ("Society to Help Avoid Redundant Effort") design automation workshop. Its originators Marie Pistilli and Pasquale (Pat) Pistilli were honored by the EDA community. Pat received the highest honor in EDA industry, the Phil Kaufman Award, for this effort and Marie was honored by having an award established in her name, the Marie Pistilli Award. Up until the mid-'70s, DAC had sessions on all types of design automation, including mechanical and architectural. After that, for all intents and purposes, only topics concerned with electronic design have been included. Also until the mid-'70s, DAC was strictly a technical conference. Then a few companies started to request space to show their products, and within a few ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Electronics
Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. This is in contrast to analog electronics and analog signals. Digital electronic circuits are usually made from large assemblies of logic gates, often packaged in integrated circuits. Complex devices may have simple electronic representations of Boolean logic functions. History The binary number system was refined by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (published in 1705) and he also established that by using the binary system, the principles of arithmetic and logic could be joined. Digital logic as we know it was the brain-child of George Boole in the mid 19th century. In an 1886 letter, Charles Sanders Peirce described how logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits.Peirce, C. S., "Letter, Peirce to A. Marquand", dated 1886, '' Writings of Charles S. Peirce'', v. 5, 1993, pp. 541–3. GooglPreview See Burks, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-silicon Validation
{{no footnotes, date=July 2011 Post-silicon validation and debug is the last step in the development of a semiconductor integrated circuit. Pre-silicon process During the pre-silicon process, engineers test devices in a virtual environment with sophisticated simulation, emulation, and formal verification tools. In contrast, post-silicon validation tests occur on actual devices running at-speed in commercial, real-world system boards using logic analyzer and assertion-based tools. Reasoning Large semiconductor companies spend millions creating new components; these are the "sunk costs" of design implementation. Consequently, it is imperative that the new chip function in full and perfect compliance to its specification, and be delivered to the market within tight consumer windows. Even a delay of a few weeks can cost tens of millions of dollars. Post-silicon validation is therefore one of the most highly leveraged steps in successful design implementation. Validation Chips c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power Optimization (EDA)
Power optimization is the use of electronic design automation tools to optimize (reduce) the power consumption of a digital design, such as that of an integrated circuit, while preserving the functionality. Introduction and history The increasing speed and complexity of today’s designs implies a significant increase in the power consumption of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) chips. To meet this challenge, researchers have developed many different design techniques to reduce power. The complexity of today’s ICs, with over 100 million transistors, clocked at over 1 GHz, means manual power optimization would be hopelessly slow and all too likely to contain errors. Computer-aided design (CAD) tools and methodologies are mandatory. One of the key features that led to the success of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, technology was its intrinsic low-power consumption. This meant that circuit designers and electronic design automation (EDA) tools could afford ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Very Large Scale Integration
Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) chips were developed and then widely adopted, enabling complex semiconductor and telecommunication technologies. The microprocessor and memory chips are VLSI devices. Before the introduction of VLSI technology, most ICs had a limited set of functions they could perform. An electronic circuit might consist of a CPU, ROM, RAM and other glue logic. VLSI enables IC designers to add all of these into one chip. History Background The history of the transistor dates to the 1920s when several inventors attempted devices that were intended to control current in solid-state diodes and convert them into triodes. Success came after World War II, when the use of silicon and germanium crystals as radar detectors led to improvements in fabrication ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Static Timing Analysis
Static timing analysis (STA) is a simulation method of computing the expected timing of a Synchronous circuit, synchronous digital circuit without requiring a simulation of the full circuit. High-performance integrated circuits have traditionally been characterized by the clock frequency at which they operate. Measuring the ability of a circuit to operate at the specified speed requires an ability to measure, during the design process, its delay at numerous steps. Moreover, delay calculation must be incorporated into the inner loop of timing optimizers at various phases of design, such as logic synthesis, layout (Placement (EDA), placement and Routing (EDA), routing), and in in-place optimizations performed late in the design cycle. While such timing measurements can theoretically be performed using a rigorous SPICE, circuit simulation, such an approach is liable to be too slow to be practical. Static timing analysis plays a vital role in facilitating the fast and reasonably ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
Alberto Luigi Sangiovanni-Vincentelli (born June 23, 1947) is an Italian-American computer scientist. He currently sits on the board of directors of Cadence Design Systems, an EDA company he co-founded in 1988. Biography Born in Milan, Italy, Sangiovanni-Vincentelli received his master of science degree in engineering at the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1971. In 1976, he moved to University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ..., where he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and holds the position of Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair and serves as a full professor. Since July 2019, he has served as Special Advisor to the Dean of Engineering of the University of California, Berkeley, for Entreprene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Closure
Design Closure is a part of the digital electronic design automation workflow by which an integrated circuit (i.e. VLSI) design is modified from its initial description to meet a growing list of design constraints and objectives. Every step in the IC design (such as static timing analysis, placement, routing, and so on) is already complex and often forms its own field of study. This article, however, looks at the overall design closure process, which takes a chip from its initial design state to the final form in which all of its design constraints are met. Introduction Every chip starts off as someone’s idea of a good thing: "If we can make a part that performs function X, we will all be rich!" Once the concept is established, someone from marketing says "To make this chip profitably, it must cost $C and run at frequency F." Someone from manufacturing says "To meet this chip’s targets, it must have a yield of Y%." Someone from packaging says “It must fit in the P pac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integrated Circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny MOSFETs (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors) integrate into a small chip. This results in circuits that are orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less expensive than those constructed of discrete electronic components. The IC's mass production capability, reliability, and building-block approach to integrated circuit design has ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of designs using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in virtually all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size and low cost of ICs such as modern computer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Routing (EDA)
In electronic design, wire routing, commonly called simply routing, is a step in the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and integrated circuits (ICs). It builds on a preceding step, called placement, which determines the location of each active element of an IC or component on a PCB. After placement, the routing step adds wires needed to properly connect the placed components while obeying all design rules for the IC. Together, the placement and routing steps of IC design are known as place and route. The task of all routers is the same. They are given some pre-existing polygons consisting of pins (also called terminals) on cells, and optionally some pre-existing wiring called preroutes. Each of these polygons are associated with a net, usually by name or number. The primary task of the router is to create geometries such that all terminals assigned to the same net are connected, no terminals assigned to different nets are connected, and all design rules are obeyed. A rou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Placement (EDA)
Placement is an essential step in electronic design automation — the portion of the physical design flow that assigns exact locations for various circuit components within the chip's core area. An inferior placement assignment will not only affect the chip's performance but might also make it non-manufacturable by producing excessive wire-length, which is beyond available routing resources. Consequently, a placer must perform the assignment while optimizing a number of objectives to ensure that a circuit meets its performance demands. Together, the placement and routing steps of IC design are known as place and route. A placer takes a given synthesized circuit netlist together with a technology library and produces a valid placement layout. The layout is optimized according to the aforementioned objectives and ready for cell resizing and buffering — a step essential for timing and signal integrity satisfaction. Clock-tree synthesis and Routing follow, completing the physical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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