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Effort launches to develop open PCell library
Initiative would allow tools from multiple EDA vendors to read standard PCells.
By Michael Santarini, Senior Editor -- EDN, 4/3/2007
In an effort to level the playing field in the analog and custom-digital tools market and to reduce the amount of efforts it requires for foundries to develop PDKs (process design kits) for each new fab process, five EDA companies have announced at Si2's Open Access conference an alliance to collaborate on the creation and distribution of an interoperable and open PCell library, dubbed IPL.
Dave Millman, vice president of marketing for Ciranova, says that the establishment of the IPL means that for the first time in semiconductor history, IC designers will be able to use the same PCell libraries in tools from multiple vendors.
The five companies initially involved with the project include Applied Wave Research (AWR), Ciranova, Silicon Canvas, Silicon Navigator,and Synopsys. But Millman says the effort is open to all comers, including Cadence Design Systems. "We are extending an open invitation to anyone and everyone with no exclusions," he says.
The effort is in fact a direct response to Cadence's refusal to make SKILL for PCell development open to other EDA players. For almost two decades, Cadence has enjoyed dominant share in the market for analog and mixed-signal design tools, and a large part of that dominance arose from the fact that Cadence has not made SKILL open to competitors.
And because Cadence has more or less owned the analog and mixed-signal tools market, foundries have traditionally developed Cadence SKILL-based PCells (in their process design kits) for new processes long before developing other forms of PCells that can be read by tools from Cadence's competitors.
The new IPL effort holds the promise of allowing foundries to develop only two PDKs instead of several. And if the IPL effort takes off, its proponents even hope that someday foundries might only have to develop one PDK, which would be readable by all EDA vendors' tools.
Millman says IPL supports the OpenAccess datatabase from the Si2. The creation of the IPL is simply the latest development in a long-running industry effort to come up with a single open-PCell library. More than a year ago, Ciranova made its Python language-based PCell development tool, PyCell Studio, free for download. The tool, which works on Si2's OpenAccess, allows users to develop Python-based PCells from scratch. Then late last year, Ciranova figured out a way to allow users to open up legacy Cadence SKILL-based PCells in third-party tools through OpenAccess.
Finally, last month, Ciranova announced an escrow agreement with Si2 that ensured that PyCell Studio will remain free and open in the event Ciranova gets acquired or goes out of business. The announcement set off speculation as to whether Ciranova was about to be acquired, perhaps by Cadence, although Millman says that is not the case.
Now, with five companies rallying behind the IPL effort (and Millman hopes more will follow), tools from several companies will potentially be able to read a single open set of PCells. The IPL is still in the development and proof-of-concept phase, and items that still need to be sorted out include validation from the various vendors and a decision about which version of OpenAccess will be used to synchronize the various vendor tools.
"This is a big deal," says Millman. "It is one thing to develop a mechanism and release it for free. But it is an entirely different deal for a bunch of vendors to come together and say 'This is the right way to do it,' and say 'We are going to invest our resources in a proof-of-concept library and validation testing and everything else.'"
Millman adds that "fab support is underway," and indeed the effort has gained at least verbal support so far from Chartered Semiconductor.
The IPL library with source code is available for free download from Ciranova. Any party interested in participating in the IPL project should contact Michael Ma, vice president of business development at Ciranova, at michael@ciranova.com.
