When People Work Together, IC Design Tools Work Together

In late 2006, five Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software companies came together and agreed to collaborate on the creation and distribution of an interoperable Pcell library (IPL) and an open infrastructure for its use. This proof-of-concept Pcell library was developed and released in less than six months, and in less than a year, demonstrated live at the fall 2007 Si2 OpenAccess conference operating in eight different tools from five different EDA companies. The success of this unlikely gathering of competitors shows that the benefits of collaboration extend all the way into integrated circuit (IC) design tool supply chain.

The "Old" Way

Historically, IC design systems have consisted of collections of software point tools, glued together into a workable design methodology through the use of extensive software scripting and multiple data format translations. This method has long been used - sometimes even by software tool vendors within their own tool sets - to bring together "silos" of application expertise to create more efficient design "flows" made up of tools that could not otherwise interoperate. Users claim that design tool integration can cost them $2 to $4 (or more) for every dollar spent on commercial EDA software tools. A parallel in semiconductor manufacturing can be found in the days when wafer processes were a chain of discrete process steps - often defined by the hardware tools themselves - between which wafers were transported by hand. Eventually, huge efficiencies were gained by customers who demanded and implemented machine interface standards, automated wafer handling, and factory automation software. The equipment industry supply chain came together to develop standards and everybody - suppliers, fabs and customers - benefited from collaboration. There are a lot of EDA standards today which have made these glued-together design flows possible, but not nearly enough has been done to provide an infrastructure for seamless interoperability. The work of the group calling itself the IPL Initiative is an active example of a group collaborating in order to create an open environment for the custom and analog design domain.

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