Olympus and Calibre speed closure

Ronald Wilson, Executive Editor -- EDN, May 27, 2010

In recent process generations, routers have used design-rule data from LEF (library-exchange-format) files to check routes on the fly in an attempt to produce DRC (design-rule-checking)-clean routes. Unfortunately, there are approximately 1500 rules, prescribing nearly 6000 operations, at the 45-nm node, according to estimates from Mentor Graphics. Equally unfortunately, rules are emerging for which there are no provisions in LEF, so these rules are not available to the routing tools. The result is that routers are creating patterns that are not passing DRC-leading to iterations, frustrated rereading of the design rules, and manual routing of problem spots.

To address these issues, Mentor has introduced Calibre InRoute, an Olympus routing kernel that directly calls Calibre nmDRC, nmLVS (layout versus schematic), and DFM (design for manufacturing) to check its work. The mechanism is a dynamic API (application-programming interface) that allows Olympus, when it has satisfied the rules in the LEF file, to pass parameters to the Calibre routines and invoke them. Calibre then works directly on the Olympus data set. The tool requires no wholesale importing or exporting of data through ASCII files.

Mentor Graphics