( DAC 04 Item 36 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 02/09/05 ]
Subject: ChipMD, MunEDA
BRAVE NEW WORLD? -- "Yield" and "Design For Manufacturability" and "DFM"
were the cheesy buzzwords of 2004. (Nobody really knows what they mean in
terms of EDA tools. All the EDA vendors know is that they smell money
there, so they're all furiously working on something in that space.) Magma
cut some sort of OEM deal with PDF Solutions here, but ChipMD was the only
tool that really got any traction my survey.
ChipMD
This is the US marketing and sales arm for German-based MunEDA. Their
DesignMD tool is another SPICE-based optimizer. They emphasize a DFY
approach to centering analog designs across PVT corners. They claim
silicon-proven designs for: cell phone, laptop, PDA. Any SPICE tool
can be used: Spectre, HSPICE, etc. Cadence integration available.
Instead of PVT corners, ChipMD promotes process distributions. Their
tools automatically recognize current mirrors and transistors that need
to be matched like differential pairs, so that during sizing the
optimizer constrains device sizes intelligently.
- Daniel Payne, Consultant
ChipMD sells a tool for design for yield for analog and mixed-signal
circuits, which basically sizes the transistors in your netlist for
maximum yield. Inputs are your SPICE netlist and models, testbenches
to measure whatever specs you need to meet, plus process variation in
Cadence PDK format. This last one is apparently not commonly supplied
because people don't know what to do with it.
- John Weiland of Intrinsix Corp.
Don't think ChipMD belongs to backend. They are more in par with
Neolinear on the analog design simulation front end side. They provide
a more accurate modeling than just corner sweeping, and can recover
real worst cases to make designs more robust and improve parametric
yield. We looked at the ChipMD last year, and had them demo on site
this year. Will evaluate them sometime next year.
Three things we like from the ChipMD demo: sensitivity analysis,
mismatch analysis, and automatic constraints setup. The problem with
ChipMD, and all the other tools trying to do optimization for analog
circuit, is the lack of source information for process statistical
information.
- Weikai Sun of Volterra
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