WILSONVILLE, Ore., May 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Mentor Graphics
Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that specialty foundry
TowerJazz has adopted the Calibre® Auto-Waivers™ product to manage
foundry design rule waivers associated with embedded IP in its
customers' designs. Automated waiver management significantly
reduces the time and effort spent reviewing design rule violations
so that designs can get to tapeout faster, while preventing
accidental escapes of legitimate design rule violations that could
impact yield. Mentor and TowerJazz will demonstrate the application
of Calibre Auto-Waivers in Mentor's booth at the upcoming Design
Automation Conference.
All foundries have a set of design rules that must be followed
by any company submitting designs for manufacture. Frequently, IP
suppliers and foundries have agreements to waive a certain design
rule check on a particular block of IP. Some waivers are agreed
upon during the design phase of an IP and some are new waivers to a
silicon-proven IP due to design rule changes that cause DRC (design
rule check) failure in the IP.
Unfortunately, when an IP supplier's customer embeds a block
with an associated waiver in a design, DRC violations are
identified by the DRC tool, and the customer is forced to review
them and get them cleared by the foundry, which takes extra time
and energy and can be very frustrating. Likewise, specific
design houses may have already agreed with the foundry on modified
or waived rules. Both of these issues are addressed by the Calibre
Auto-Waivers solution. Additionally, when such GDS (graphic data
system) files arrive at TowerJazz for manufacture, a DRC run is
performed before MASK generation. TowerJazz uses the waiver flow to
clean all the agreed waivers and show only real DRC errors that
should be addressed.
"TowerJazz is expanding our offering into new markets and
regions, so one of our key challenges is minimizing overall tapeout
cycle time while maintaining both flexibility and quality
standards," said Ori Galzur, vice president of VLSI Design Center
and Design Enablement at TowerJazz. "By employing the Calibre
Auto-Waivers product in the flow, we can quickly and accurately
deal with waivers associated with both IP embedded in our
customers' designs, and customer-specific rules, eliminating
problems that could otherwise delay tapeouts."
The Calibre Auto-Waivers product, a tool that complements
Calibre nmDRC™ product, supports automatic waiver management by
using waiver information included in the IP library itself, or on
top of the standard Calibre DRC design kit issued by the foundry.
The Calibre product uses the waiver information to automatically
modify its handling of the specific checks and locations associated
with the waived rules. The process is fully qualified by the
foundry as part of the Calibre product certification for a specific
process and rule file. Through this mechanism, the Calibre product
can automatically and accurately remove waived violations from the
DRC output, regardless of how or where the errors appear
hierarchically. It also reports the violations that are waived,
provides information about the waivers to the designer on request,
and creates an audit trail of the waived results.
"Calibre Auto-Waivers is gaining a strong following because an
automatic waiver flow maintains rigorous sign-off checking while
eliminating days of wasted time reviewing violations that have
already been waived," said Michael
Buehler-Garcia, senior director of Calibre Design Solutions
Marketing. "The solution gives TowerJazz a way to provide
flexibility to their customers while maintaining golden sign-off
quality."
Join Mentor Graphics and TowerJazz at DAC for a joint session
demonstrating the use of Calibre Auto-Waivers on June 10 at 10:00AM
in the Mentor booth (#1432), Moscone Center, San Francisco.
About Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics Corporation is a
world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions,
providing products, consulting services and award-winning support
for the world's most successful electronic, semiconductor and
systems companies. Established in 1981, the company reported
revenues in the last fiscal year in excess of $1.15 billion. Corporate headquarters are located
at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville,
Oregon 97070-7777. World Wide Web site:
http://www.mentor.com/ .
(Mentor Graphics, Mentor, and Calibre are registered trademarks,
and nmDRC and Auto-Waivers are trademarks of Mentor Graphics
Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered
trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.)
For more information, please contact:
David Smith
Mentor Graphics
503.685.1135
david_smith@mentor.com
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SOURCE Mentor Graphics