GLOBALFOUNDRIES Unveils Industry's First 28nm Signoff-Ready Digital Design Flows

Multiple 28nm design flows available through collaboration with leaders in EDA/IP ecosystem

Milpitas, Calif. - January 13, 2011 -  GLOBALFOUNDRIES today introduced the industry's first 28nm silicon-validated signoff-ready digital design flows to help chip designers deliver the next generation of power-sensitive mobile and consumer electronic devices. Developed in collaboration with EDA/IP ecosystem leaders and based on GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm Super Low Power (SLP) technology with Gate First High-k Metal Gate (HKMG), the flows are precisely tuned to help overcome the unique challenges of designing and manufacturing integrated circuits at leading edge nodes.

The new signoff-ready flows were developed with recognition of the need for silicon validation to ensure first-time-right silicon success, setting a new standard for quality, scope, and relevance in foundry flows. Customers can now produce signoff ready 28nm designs using the industry's most advanced set of synthesis, place and route, sign-off, and DFM tools, tool scripts, and methodologies. 

"Many of the world's top IC designers are using our 28nm technology to deliver tomorrow's most innovative mobile and consumer devices," said Mojy Chian, senior vice president of design enablement at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "By collaborating closely with our partners in the EDA/IP ecosystem to provide a comprehensive 28nm design platform, we are giving customers confidence that their designs will be brought to life smoothly and in time to meet their critical market requirements."

Traditional foundry design flows have not taken into account the growing interaction of design and manufacturing at advanced technology nodes. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has addressed these issues by emphasizing early collaborative development with providers of EDA software and IP to validate design methodologies against real silicon. In addition to tight integration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES' signoff physical verification solution, all flows leverage GLOBALFOUNDRIES' heritage as a leader in Design-for-Manufacturing (DFM) by supporting DRC+, the company's silicon-validated solution that goes beyond standard Design Rule Checking (DRC) and uses two-dimensional shape-based pattern-matching to enable up to a 100-fold speed improvement in identifying complex manufacturing issues without sacrificing accuracy. 

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Cadence have jointly developed a complex 28nm-SLP design that fully demonstrates Cadence's portfolio of advanced silicon implementation tools, including high-level synthesis, low power, routing, DFM, and verification.  The 9 mm2 multi-million gate design is architected to highlight and showcase advanced 28nm chip implementation techniques and to enable quantitative silicon validation of power, performance, and area tradeoffs, as well as robustness and yield. The design is being released to manufacturing and is expected to be silicon validated in the first half of 2011.  The full design, implementation scripts, and a set of recommended methodology white papers on 28nm routing and DFM will be available to customers starting in Q1 of 2011. 

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Synopsys have collaborated to develop a 28nm-SLP design flow based on the Synopsys Galaxy Implementation Platform, together with a 28nm-SLP Foundry-Ready System technology plug-in for the Lynx Design System. The silicon-proven design flow integrates the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm-SLP design rules with Synopsys' latest EDA technologies, including PrimeTime® advanced on-chip variation analysis, IC Compiler's DFM-optimized Zroute router and In-Design physical verification, and IC Validator DRC and DRC+ pattern support. The Lynx Foundry-Ready System adapts Lynx's Galaxy Platform-enabled production design flow to GLOBALFOUNDRIES' technology and includes guidelines and tool settings based on the latest 28nm silicon data to help ensure the highest quality and the most robust designs. The Lynx Foundry-Ready System addresses recommended routing rules, on-chip-variation and advanced on-chip variation analysis, and DFM, enabling a more efficient handoff with the foundry. Both the foundry design flow and 28nm-SLP Lynx Foundry-Ready System are expected to be available to customers starting in Q1 of 2011. GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Mentor Graphics are developing a complete reference flow based on the Olympus-SoC and Calibre® InRoute products. The Olympus-SoC router has been qualified for GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm-SLP technology, providing support for both advanced 28nm ground rules and recommended rules to implement DFM, improved recipes for efficient routing, and support for manufacturing scoring analysis (MAS).

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Magma have worked to develop a 28nm-SLP signoff-ready flow based on the Talus® Vortex IC implementation platform. Talus Vortex is an ideal physical design environment for engineers creating complex systems on a chip (SoCs) at all process nodes and where performance and power management are crucial. It dramatically improves productivity by allowing designers to implement up to 1.5 million cells or more per day on large designs or blocks - with crosstalk avoidance, advanced on-chip variation (AOCV) and multi-mode multi-corner analysis enabled. Talus also performs advanced low-power design analysis and optimization via an automated multi-Vdd methodology. Talus has already been used by Magma's and GLOBALFOUNDRIES' mutual customers to meet aggressive time, power and performance targets.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is jointly developing a 28nm-SLP signoff-ready flow with Apache Design Solutions using RedHawk and Totem to provide customers with a robust solution to meet their low power demands. RedHawk is a production proven power signoff platform for large scale SoCs including those with ultra-low power design techniques. Totem offers power, noise, and reliability sign-off for analog/mixed-signal designs. The suite of Apache's products in the GLOBALFOUNDRIES' sign-off flow enables designers to perform early prototyping, circuit optimization, and full-chip sign-off.

A prerequisite in developing all of these advanced flows is rigorous qualification of the digital routers. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has developed a stringent set of requirements that digital routers from Cadence, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, and Magma must meet in order to be qualified as signoff-ready. This includes meeting physical verification signoff rules and recommended rules, run time and memory footprints, as well as quality of results. The signoff-ready flows and router qualifications are supported by a full suite of 28nm-SLP Artisan advanced physical IP from ARM, including standard cells, power management kit, memory compilers, and interface IP.

All of GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm technologies employ the Gate First approach to HKMG, which is superior to other foundry 28nm technologies in both scalability (performance, power, die size, design compatibility) and manufacturability. The Gate First solution shares the process flow, design flexibility, design elements and benefits of all previous nodes based upon Poly SiON gates.

"Once again, Cadence has teamed with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to help our mutual customers tackle their toughest advanced-node challenges," said John Bruggeman II, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Cadence. "Our Silicon Realization technologies, particularly the Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) System, enabled us to play a leading role on the 28nm High-K Metal Gate Signoff-Ready Digital Design Flow. This end-to-end digital flow leverages unified, silicon-proven 28nm routing intent, DFM abstraction and built-in signoff capabilities to deliver predictable silicon convergence. In addition, EDI System's in-design DRC+ leverages signoff-quality pattern matching technology, providing customers with GLOBALFOUNDRIES-certified DRC+ fixing, which is over 100 times faster than traditional flows."

"Our early collaboration on process, design and manufacturing has enabled GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Synopsys to deliver a comprehensive front-to-back production-proven 28nm design solution based on the Synopsys Lynx Design System," said John Chilton, senior vice president of marketing and strategic development at Synopsys. "The Galaxy Implementation Platform's advanced design and physical verification technologies, along with the pre-validated 28nm SLP Lynx Foundry-Ready System, enables leading-edge SoC design teams to deliver their next-generation power- smart mobile and consumer electronic devices more efficiently and with lower integration risk and cost."

"Achieving 28nm signoff-ready flows is a continuation of the long-term collaboration and mutual investment between GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Mentor," said Joseph Sawicki, vice president and general manager of Mentor's design to silicon division. "The integration of Olympus, Calibre and GLOBALFOUNDRIES technology into a seamless flow, including consideration and optimization for advanced DFM effects, ensures signoff-ready results. This solution helps mutual customers fully leverage 28nm process capabilities, yet still maintain or reduce design cycle times."

"Supporting the ever-increasing performance, time-to-market and power minimization requirements of the 28-nm ICs used in today's tablets, smartphones and networking and embedded devices requires advanced design and manufacturing technology," said Premal Buch, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. "The combination of GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm-SLP process technology and Talus Vortex provides mutual customers with extremely fast throughput for low-power designs at the 28-nm node."

"Apache Design Solutions' focus is on delivering products that address the critical design challenges of power, noise, and reliability. The company's industry proven sign-off solutions for digital and custom IC power supply noise, electro-migration (EM), and electro-static discharge (ESD) have enabled many customers to predict and manage power related issues in their designs," said Dian Yang, senior vice president and general manager of Apache. "Apache's collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES on the 28nm-SLP sign-off flow will further ensure our mutual customers to meet low power demands and achieve silicon success."

"The ARM Artisan physical IP platform offers designers a wide range of implementation options to achieve their low power requirements and processor performance goals," said Simon Segars, ARM, executive vice president and general manager, Physical IP Division. "Qualifying EDA technology with Artisan physical IP and tuning the IP for GLOBALFOUNDRIES' manufacturing process is an important element of assuring these platforms support the diverse SoC implementation flows used across the fabless semiconductor industry."

ABOUT GLOBALFOUNDRIES

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is the world's first full-service semiconductor foundry with a truly global manufacturing and technology footprint. Launched in March 2009 through a partnership between AMD [NYSE: AMD] and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), GLOBALFOUNDRIES provides a unique combination of advanced technology, manufacturing excellence and global operations. With the integration of Chartered in January 2010, GLOBALFOUNDRIES significantly expanded its capacity and ability to provide best-in-class foundry services from mainstream to the leading edge. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is headquartered in Silicon Valley with manufacturing operations in Singapore, Germany, and a new leading-edge fab under construction in Saratoga County, New York. These sites are supported by a global network of R&D, design enablement, and customer support in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

For more information on GLOBALFOUNDRIES, visit http://www.globalfoundries.com.