Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Prakash Gopalakrishnan

Keith Dennison

Akshat Shah

Rongchang Yan

David Allan White

Michael McSherry

Ed Fischer

Bruce Yanagida

David N Dixon

Alisa Yurovsky

Hongzhou Liu

Elias Lee Fallon

Rob A Rutenbar

Disclosed are methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for implementing electronic circuit designs with electro-migration awareness. Some embodiments perform schematic level simulation(s) to determine electrical characteristics, identifies physical parasitics of a layout component, determines the electrical or physical characteristics associated to electro-migration analysis on the component, and determines whether the component meets EM related constraint(s) while implementing the physical design of the electronic circuit in some embodiments. Some embodiments further determine adjustment(s) to the component or related data where the EM related constraints are not met and/or and present the adjustment(s) in the form of hints. Various data and information, such as currents in various forms or voltages, are passed between various schematic level tools and physical level tools.

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for implementing electronic circuit designs with electro-migration awareness

Disclosed are a method, system, and computer program product for implementing electronic circuit designs with electrical awareness. The method or the system updates the schematic level tool(s) and physical design tool(s) with electrical parasitic data or electrical characteristic data associated with electrical parasitics so both schematic and physical design tools are aware of the electrical parasitic or characteristic data in performing their functions such as extraction based simulations. The methods or systems are also aware of EM or IR-drop constraint(s) while implementing or creating a partial layout less than a complete layout. The method or the system also provides a user interface for a design tool to provide in situ, customizable, real-time information for implementing electronic circuit designs with electrical awareness. The methods or systems also support constraint verification for electronic circuit design implementation with electrical awareness.

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for implementing electronic circuit designs with electrical awareness

Disclosed are methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for implementing electronic designs with simulation awareness. A schematic is identified or created and simulated at the schematic level to characterize the functional behavior of the circuit or to ensure the circuit design meets the required design specifications. Physical data of a component of the design is identified, created, or updated, and the electrical parasitic associated with physical data is characterized. One or more electrical characteristics associated with the parasitic is further characterized and mapped to the simulator to re-simulate the circuit design to analyze the impact of parasitics. Some embodiments re-run the same simulation process incrementally in an interactive manner by accepting incremental design or parameter changes from the design environment.

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for implementing electronic circuit designs with simulation awareness

A user is presented with a simulation environment within which the user is provided a choice to select between parasitic simulation modes of varying accuracy, the modes including a mode without parasitics and a plurality of modes including parasitics with a varying degree of accuracy. A selection from among the modes is received from the user and simulation test are performed at the selected degree of accuracy.

Technique for modeling parasitics from layout during circuit design and for parasitic aware circuit design using modes of varying accuracy

A computer-readable medium stores a specification for a circuit layout. The specification includes: a configuration of rooms for placing devices, one or more room constraints for the configuration of rooms, one or more groups of devices for the rooms, and one or more device constraints for devices in a same room. The configuration of rooms may include a tree-structure for the rooms. The room constraints may include a common symmetry line for a first room and a second room. The device constraints may include a self-symmetry constraint for a first device about a symmetry line in a first room. The device constraints may include a symmetry constraint for a first device and a second device about a symmetry line in a first room. The devices may include analog or RF (radio frequency) devices.

Optimizing circuit layouts by configuring rooms for placing devices

Techniques are presented for accounting for parasitics in the automated design of integrated circuits. In one set of techniques, model values for parasitic models are received on a schematic environment from a user, the parasitic models are evaluated from the schematic using the received model values, the parasitic models are transferred to a layout environment, and the transferred parasitic models are evaluated on the layout environment. In other techniques, model values are received for parasitic models from a user, the parasitic models are evaluated on the layout environment, and the process then backannotates the parasitic models evaluated on the layout environment and corresponding parameter values to a schematic environment. In yet other techniques, a user is presented with a simulation environment within which the user is provided a choice to select between parasitic simulation modes of varying accuracy, the modes including a mode without parasitics and a plurality of modes including parasitics with a varying degree of accuracy. A selection from among the modes is received from the user and simulation test are performed at the selected degree of accuracy.

The present invention relates to a method and system for tuning a circuit. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving a description of the circuit, and selecting a design point of the circuit for evaluation using a sizing tool, where the design point comprises a design of the circuit that meets a set of predefined design specifications, and the circuit comprises a group of circuit devices. The method further includes receiving a set of tuning information for the group of circuit devices tuning the group of circuit devices using the set of tuning information to create a group of tuned circuit devices, creating an updated layout of the group of tuned circuit devices using a layout tool, creating estimated parasitic information of the group of tuned circuit devices using the updated layout, and verifying the design point meets design goals of the circuit using the estimated parasitic information of the updated layout.

Method and system for tuning a circuit

Method and system are disclosed for designing a circuit using an integrated sizing, layout, and extractor tool. In one embodiment, a method for designing a circuit including initializing a set of design points, where a design point comprises a design of the circuit that meets a set of predefined design specifications, determining sizes for the circuit using a size optimization iteration process, and pausing the sizing optimization iteration process periodically for updating parasitic information of the circuit. The method further includes selecting a subset of design points from the set of design points, generating a layout of the circuit using devices sizes obtained from the set of design points, generating an extracted netlist using the layout, wherein the extracted netlist includes parasitic information of the circuit, and simulating the circuit using the extracted netlist to verify the set of predefined design specifications are met.

Integrated sizing, layout, and extractor tool for circuit design

A plurality of member devices is defined in a conformal outline having a pair of spaced parallel sides. Associated with each member device is a spacing constraint that sets a minimum distance the member device can be spaced from another member device and each side of the conformal outline. The spacing between member devices and/or the sides of the conformal outline are increased and/or decreased as necessary to minimize the area of the conformal outline that the member devices are received in with no violation of the spacing constraints while excluding from the conformal outline all or part of any nonmember devices defined therein.

Growing community of inventors

Allison Park, PA, United States of America

Prakash Gopalakrishnan