Hurricane

	Anaconda	SiFix	>>Hurricane	SiClone	Companion	XTREME

Reuse and Optimize your existing silicon-proven intellectual property

Hurricane enables reuse of silicon-proven designs for efficient and faster implementation of SoC

Benefits

Faster time to market for SoC by reusing and optimizing existing IP
Lower porting costs by migrating rather than redesigning cells and logic
Leverage scarce circuit design and layout talent
Start designing earlier and leverage the benefits of a new process technology
Smaller silicon area compared to traditional methods
Squeeze more performance out of existing designs using the same process technology

Features

Reads any GDSII layout
Produces DRC-correct results in any DSM target technology
Significantly faster migration of large designs using new compaction algorithm
Transistor resizing: automatically or from user-supplied directives
2D scanning algorithm for superior recognition and treatment of 45-degree polygon edges
Automatic resolution of conflicts between process rules and user-specified constraints
Display of design rules and critical paths to identify over-height cells
Re-proportioning of power supply bus bars to satisfy electrical design rules
Contact addition/deletion to optimize gates and well/substrate taps
Integration with industry standard characterization and optimization tools
Includes DSM "preferred design rules" to optimize yield without increasing silicon area

Overview

Hurricane is compaction software enabling rapid migration of physical layout. A significant speedup and increase in compaction capacity is achieved with Hurricane's new compaction algorithm. Hurricane provides an order of magnitude speed improvement and increase in capacity compared to other commercially available compactors. With Hurricane large IP and full-custom blocks can be quickly migrated to new process technologies and reused for implementing systems on silicon. A complete ARM core, for example, can be migrated in less than four hours.

Hurricane enables reuse and optimization of silicon- proven designs and large physical intellectual property blocks in new process technologies. Reusing hard IP is an efficient and speedier method for developing a system on a chip while leveraging the previous investment in design. With Hurricane, silicon-proven hard IP can be rapidly re-targeted to new processes and can take advantage of the latest deep submicron process to enhance the performance of existing or new products. It also can be used to retarget existing IC designs to develop a second source or to optimize a design for power and performance in existing process technologies.

Migrated Core

Hurricane does a rapid re-layout of an existing physical design block to new process design rules and produces an optimized and design-rule-correct new layout. Hurricane preserves the source design's functionality and layout topology. Since Hurricane reuses silicon-proven layout, it eliminates debugging concerns associated with redesign processes using synthesis and re-place and re-routing. Sagantec's compaction software is the industry's most widely used physical design migration tool. It has been used successfully to migrate large numbers of standard cell libraries, memory blocks, logic blocks and full chips.

The inputs to Hurricane are a source layout in GDSII or CIF format, the new design rule file for target process technologies and any user-specified constraints. Based on these inputs, Hurricane produces a new optimized layout in GDSII/CIF format conforming to the new process design rules while preserving the functionality and maintaining the layout topology of the source layout. Hurricane is a polygon compactor that manipulates individual polygon edges by moving them closer together until constraints, either from a new process design rule file or from a user-specified constraint, are about to be violated.

Hurricane's many capabilities and expert rules, such as re-contacting, direction control, wire length minimization, transistor resizing, and re-proportioning of power supply bus bars, enable Hurricane to generate a much denser layout compared to a traditional 'linear shrink.' Hurricane consistently generates layouts that are 20 to 30 percent smaller than a traditional linear shrink. Hurricane's innovative 2D scanning algorithm enables accurate and optimum handling of 45-degree polygon edges.

Hurricanes DSM "preferred design rule" feature enlarges widths/spacings and enclosures based on user preferences, thereby increasing the manufacturing yield without increasing the area of a design.

Unlike other tools, the Hurricane technology file is easy to set up using Sagantec's graphical user interface. A typical technology rule file can be created in a day compared to weeks for competing products. Our partnerships with leading foundries enable us to provide proven technology files for popular CMOS processes for faster development of customer-specific design rule files.

Sagantec's worldwide resources of experienced application engineers are always available to provide support for rapid implementation of customers' design reuse projects. With Hurricane, most design migration projects can be completed in a few weeks compared to several months with other methods. A full custom CPU core was migrated and verified in a new process technology in less than 2 weeks. The same block would have taken several man-years of manual effort.

Hurricane's integration with industry standard timing and power optimization tools enables automated transistor resizing for speed and power at the layout level. It also is integrated with industry standard characterization and physical design verification tools enabling faster verification of migrated layouts.

Summary

Hurricane enables reuse of existing silicon-proven physical designs to conform to the exact design rules of a newer, faster deep submicron process. Results from Hurricane are comparable to handcrafting and are far superior to those from a traditional linear/optical shrink. Hurricane generates a design rule correct layout by enforcing design rules of the new process during process migration. Each piece of logic is migrated to the new process rather than being simplistically shrunk. In general, design rules can be changed nonlinearly. Hurricane enables designers to start implementing designs earlier with existing proven designs and IP blocks. It also enables designers to leverage the performance advantage offered by the latest deep submicron process technology. Any unexpected last-minute design rule changes by the foundry can be easily accommodated with Hurricane. It offers the flexibility of fine tuning layout rules to improve performance, yield and reliability.