Siemens partners with TSMC for 3nm product certifications and other technology milestones

October 27, 2022 -- Siemens Digital Industries Software today announced TSMC has certified a broad array of EDA solutions from Siemens Digital Industries Software for the foundry’s newest process technologies. In addition, recent collaboration between Siemens and TSMC has successfully established key milestones of relevance to mutual customers, including 3D IC enablement, further advancement of EDA in the cloud, and a range of other successful initiatives.

“Siemens has been a long-standing ecosystem partner that continues to demonstrate excellence in next-generation SoC and 3D IC design enablement over the years,” said Dan Kochpatcharin, head of Design Infrastructure Management Division at TSMC. “Our latest collaboration with Siemens can better enable next-generation silicon and system innovation for high performance computing (HPC) and mobile applications. We look forward to continuing to provide our mutual customers with best-in-class technologies and solutions for optimized performance, power, and area, and help them get to market on time.”

Calibre platform certified for N4P and N3E processes

Siemens’ industry-leading Calibre® nmPlatform tool for IC physical verification sign-off is fully certified for TSMC’s advanced N4P and N3E processes. The Calibre nmPlatform tool products certified for TSMC’s N4P and N3E processes include: Calibre nmDRC software, Calibre YieldEnhancer™ software, Calibre PERC™ software, Calibre xACT™ software and Calibre nmLVS software.

TSMC and Siemens have also collaborated to certify the mPower™ analog software solution for transistor-level EM/IR sign-off for TSMC’s N3E process. This achievement allows TSMC’s customers to apply the mPower solutions’ unique EM/IR signoff solution to analog designs.

Analog FastSPICE platform certified for N4P and N3E processes

Siemens’ Analog FastSPICE platform for circuit verification of nanometer analog, radio frequency (RF), mixed-signal, memory, and custom digital circuits has also successfully achieved TSMC certification for the foundry’s advanced N4P and N3E processes.

Further, as part of the custom design reference flow (CDRF) for TSMC’s N3E process, Siemens’ Analog FastSPICE platform now supports TSMC’s Reliability Aware Simulation technology, which addresses IC aging and real-time self-heating effects among other advanced reliability features. TSMC’s N4P CDRF also includes Siemens’ Solido™ Variation Designer software for advanced variation-aware verification at 3, 4, 5, and 6+ sigma.

TSMC 3DFabricTM Alliance EDA partnership and 3DbloxTM design solution enablement

As announced at TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) Ecosystem Forum this week, TSMC has launched the new OIP 3DFabricAlliance to speed up customer adoption and production of 3D IC designs, and also to accelerate ecosystem readiness for TSMC’s 3DFabricTM technologies, a comprehensive family of 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies. Siemens has extended its longtime relationship with TSMC to additionally participate as an initial member of TSMC’s 3DFabric Alliance for the EDA category.

Through years of partnership and collaboration, Siemens collaborates with TSMC on Xpedition Substrate Integrator software, Xpedition Package Designer software, HyperLynx™ software, Calibre 3DSTACK software and Tessent™ software solutions to support customers’ 3D IC designs using 3DFabric technologies. The Calibre xACT™ software is used to extract interconnect parasitics and Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) in complex 3D stacking and packaging configurations. Accurate and efficient high-frequency extraction of transmission line-like structures, as well as interposers’ high-speed signal buses connecting High Bandwidth Memories (HBMs) and SoCs that are critical in todays advanced process designs were demonstrated in 3DFabric design-enablement qualifications.

To help mutual customers deploying 3D IC architectures in their next generation ICs, Siemens has enhanced its Calibre 3DSTACK software to support TSMC’s 3Dblox standard for heterogeneous process DRC and LVS checking, as well as for thermal analysis through Siemens’ Simcenter™ Flotherm™ software. For thermal analysis, the Calibre software combined with Simcenter Flotherm software has been certified fulfilling required accuracy and has been enhanced to enable automatic extraction, power map generation and simulation of the complete 3D IC assembly.

Calibre platform in the cloud

Through the TSMC OIP Cloud Alliance initiative, TSMC has collaborated with Microsoft and Siemens on best known methods for running Siemens’ industry-leading Calibre nmDRC software on Microsoft Azure. Through these methods, the partners have demonstrated improved run times and faster overall turn-around times. Mutual customers can employ these methods to help achieve optimal performance when using the Calibre platform on Azure, to get their designs to production faster.

"Siemens’ long and prolific partnership with TSMC continues to help our joint customers deliver highly innovative and differentiated ICs,” said Joe Sawicki, executive vice president, IC-EDA for Siemens Digital Industries Software. “Siemens is pleased to extend this partnership with the recent certifications of Siemens’ design platforms for TSMC’s newest and most advanced semiconductor process technologies.”

Siemens Digital Industries Software helps organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware and services from the Siemens Xcelerator business platform. Siemens' software and the comprehensive digital twin enable companies to optimize their design, engineering and manufacturing processes to turn today's ideas into the sustainable products of the future. From chips to entire systems, from product to process, across all industries, Siemens Digital Industries Software is where today meets tomorrow.