System solves process variation design problems

The Variation Designer system enables designers to eliminate design losses resulting from over- and under-design without sacrificing efficiency and productivity.

As process complexity increases and variation effects arise at smaller geometries, Variation Designer allows designers to expand their capabilities by plugging in applications created to solve specific variation problems, without the need for re-integration with the design environment.

Its use results in 'right designs' that meet or exceed specifications, with minimised power/area and maximised yields in a shorter time than is possible with a traditional design flow.

In conjunction with Variation Designer, Solido has released seven statistical variation applications.

These use a systematic and consistent True Corner-based design methodology.

This flow extends the familiar digital corner-based design methodology to account for process variation effects.

True Corners account for global, local (mismatch) and environmental variations for a specific design, and accurately represent the manufacturing and operating variance that a design is subjected to.

The released applications include such functionalities as Latin hypercube sampling and run-time feedback, corner discovery, statistical sweep/sensitivity analysis and high-sigma verification.

Other applications, including additional ones for statistical variation effects and well proximity effects, will be made available in the future.

Variation Designer is extremely scalable and is able to handle the high-capacity requirements imposed by large circuits with thousands of active devices.

It has been tightly integrated with the Cadence ADE (analogue design environment), Spectre, and the Synopsys Hspice design flows, and will also support other design flows in the near future, including custom flows.