Magma and UMC deliver robust physical verification and DFM solution for 65 nm

Magma Design Automation Inc., a provider of chip design solutions, and UMC, a leading global semiconductor foundry, have announced a broad physical verification and design for manufacturability (DFM) solution for 65-nanometer (nm) designs. The two companies completed joint qualification of Magma’s Quartz DRC, Quartz LVS and Quartz DFM for UMC’s advanced processes and development of foundry-validated runsets and models that support the flow, which is tuned to detect design problems so they are corrected quickly. With the software, runsets and models, designers can accelerate time to market and improve manufacturability of chips targeted for UMC’s advanced 65-nm process technology.

Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS are the industry’s first fully scalable design rule checking (DRC) and layout-vs.-schematic (LVS) products. Leveraging a unique architecture and advanced modeling capabilities, this revolutionary physical verification solution allows affordable, massively distributed processing. With this technology and the right number of processors, virtually any design can be physically verified in less than two hours. Quartz DFM allows designers to analyze and characterize the timing and power impact due to sources of manufacturing variability, such as lithography and CMP. With this, designers can reduce the guard-banding required by traditional design flows, allowing significant gains in timing and power performance.

"UMC continually works to provide its customers with design and manufacturing solutions that help ensure silicon success. We believe Magma’s physical verification software provides significant turnaround time advantages to our mutual customers,” said Ken Liou, director of the IP and Design Support division at UMC. "The qualification of Quartz DRC, Quartz LVS and Quartz DFM for our 65-nm process and our ongoing collaboration with Magma demonstrates our commitment to helping our customers address complex system-on-chip design challenges and shorten their time to market.”

“IC designers need fast, reliable physical verification to help minimize the cost of developing advanced chips,” said John Lee, general manager of Magma’s Physical Verification Business Unit. “We pleased to be partnering with UMC to make it easier for more customers to leverage advanced process technologies to meet their most challenging design and schedule requirements.”

Magma