EDN's 18th Annual Innovation Awards Finalists

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Category: EDA (Digital-IC-Design Tools)
WINNER: Calibre nmOPC optical-proximity-correction tool (Mentor Graphics)

Computational lithography at 45 nm and below requires supercomputer-level high-performance computing capabilities. Mentor Graphics Calibre nmOPC delivers technology that supplies the required performance without the high cost of specialized, dedicated hardware or massive increases in general-purpose computers.

According to Mentor, Calibre nmOPC contains a variety of pioneering features, but its single most important innovation is the development of a Hybrid High Performance Computing platform combining general-purpose computers with Cell BE-based coprocessor accelerators. Cell processors had already proven their worth in graphical and compute-intensive environments, such as the Sony PlayStation. Mentor Graphics created an innovative computing architecture with an easily and generally accessible way to use existing standard computing clusters in conjunction with cell-processor clusters. This architecture allows customers to maximize the performance of their standard clusters simply by connecting the standard, commercially available cell-processor cluster to the general-purpose cluster using Ethernet. Calibre nmOPC enabled customers to achieve a 4× to 10× improvement in runtime with little to no increase in general-purpose computing requirements. Additionally, customers can now shift between sparse and dense modeling techniques for individual layers, maximizing the efficiency of their process. Calibre nmOPC users not only avoid the cost of extensive new computing resources, they also avoid the ongoing costs of the additional support infrastructure (space, energy, and cooling requirements). And, you can port Calibre nmOPC to new industry-standard hardware in the future. See EDN’s coverage of the nmOPC release.