RTL to GDSII services for Digital Video Chip

Executive Summary

Our customer is a leading supplier of Diagnostic and prognostic products and tools designed for integrated circuit fabrication and operation.

The Digital video chip contains analog and digital blocks. There are two digital blocks that controlled signals from analog blocks.

The customer engaged eInfochips to leverage physical design expertise and at the same time achieve a cost benefit.

eInfochips team successfully performed physical design of the complex ASIC using a well defined flow and methodology. We built a custom power structure to achieve IR drop target and resolved congestion issues by choosing proper placement of standard cells.

The Customer

Our customer is a world leader in providing advanced electronic prognostics, health management (PHM) solutions, semiconductor IP blocks, and built-in self-test (BIST) solutions for critical applications. They develop families of intelligent, design-for-manufacturing tools covering the entire semiconductor development lifecycle to improve the yield, design processes, and reliability of emerging nano-level processes for fabless and fab manufacturers.

The Challenge

  • Congestion due to an unusual shape of floor plan and less routing resources
  • Latch based design complicated timing analysis, clock tree synthesis
  • IR drop targets

The Solution

eInfochips offered the following physical design services:

  • RTL to GDSII implementation
  • Library development in 180nm technology
  • Prepared timing constraints as per customer specifications
  • Performed logical synthesis using Magma Blast Create
  • Developed custom floor plan with 28 corners (Polygon shape)
  • Implemented physical synthesis including CTS and timing closure

Technology

  • Industry: Semiconductor - Tools
  • Technology: 180nm TSMC, 4 Metal Layers
  • Design Complexity: 300K Gates
  • Frequency: 160 MHz
  • Tools: Magma (Blast Create, Blast Fusion, Blast Rail); Mentor Graphics (Calibre)

The Benefit

  • Provided cost-effective and time-effective development for the customer
  • Successfully resolved DRC and Antenna violations
  • All libraries were developed meeting customer's quality requirements