There is increasing consumer demand for semiconductors with more functionality, lower cost and shorter time to market. While the manufacturing technology is there to support higher transistor count chips, the design technology has fallen behind. The key reason behind this gap is the increasing design complexity – both Silicon complexity as well as the System complexity. As the manufacturing process is being scaled to support smaller geometries, previously ignored physical effects are having a greater impact on the correctness of the design. Also increasing size of the circuit along with the more complex functionality involved is leading to increasing complexity of design specification and validation.

Leading semiconductor and SoC companies are tackling this increasing design complexity by creation of new design methodologies that enable re-use and decrease the uncertainties associated with the design and verification process. These new methodologies can become a reality only if they are supported by newer design tools. SoftJin believes that only those semiconductor design companies that are able to keep pace with the new design methodologies will be the winner.

While the commercially available EDA tools are getting enhanced to handle the design complexity challenges, a semiconductor design company needs to devote special attention to having access to customized EDA tools and flows for various reasons:

1. Need to automate unique methodologies- The unique and proprietary design methodology developed by a semiconductor design company will provide the design productivity advantage over competition. In order to automate these unique methodologies, companies would need tools with specialized feature and performance requirements. Such requirements can only be partially fulfilled by the available off-the-shelf tools as those tools typically have the most generic features needed by the majority of the design community.

2. Need to get Silicon success at finer geometries– Silicon success at geometries such as 65 nm and 45 nm requires closer interaction between the design and manufacturing teams. This interaction would need to be captured in the next generation DFM/DFY tools. The IDMs, having both the design and manufacturing knowledge base, are well placed to bridge that gap and develop customized tools for their in-house use without having to divulge their proprietary know-how to external parties.

3. Need for seamless design flows– Apart from individual EDA tools, a semiconductor design company needs access to a capability to integrate the tools together into design flows in line with its methodology. Here, the requirements of various design groups in the company could vary depending upon the type of design the team is working on. Herein, an external EDA partner that is vendor neutral and exposed to various tool flows across companies could add value in bringing the best practices and help set up the right tool flow with optimal cost.

4. Need to decrease EDA tool ownership costs- The increasing commercial tool cost is also pushing up the total design costs. While licensing a commercially available off-the-shelf tool, the semiconductor design company pays in direct proportion to the number of license seats. Add to that the cost of maintenance contracts and the staff required internally for maintaining the tools. Evidently, the Total cost of ownership of in-house EDA tool is independent of the number of designers and thus will provide EDA tool cost savings as the design teams grow.

SoftJin’s offerings:
In contrast to the one size fit all approach of current commercial EDA tool vendors, SoftJin’s philosophy is completely customer centric. SoftJin partners with in-house EDA groups and provides them with the competitive edge through design and development of customized tools that address the challenges listed above. SoftJin’s EDA tool development group has a rich and extensive experience of working with the internal EDA groups at large system design houses and has developed customized EDA tools across the spectrum of design flow, from System level design tools down to post layout DFM related tools.

Our services for in-house CAD groups include:

1. New EDA tool development Services – SoftJin develops new EDA software tools for the specific requirements of its customers. Herein, SoftJin also develops point tools and integrate those into the existing tool flow of the customers. Usually exclusively developed in services mode, SoftJin transfers the source code to the customer. Click here for a Case Study of a recent new tool development engagement undertaken by SoftJin for a European semiconductor company in the domain of System Design Automation.

2. EDA tool enhancement Services – SoftJin enhances the existing in-house tools of the customers by incorporating specific features or enhancing the performance of the tool. Any ongoing maintenance and customization of existing tools of customer can also be undertaken by SoftJin. Click here for Case Study of a long term tool performance enhancement engagement undertaken by SoftJin for a Japanese semiconductor company in the domain of Photomask data generation.

3. Design Technology Services: SoftJin can develop the interfaces between your existing tools and help provide a seamless design flow with the help of our Design Technology group.

• Benchmarking of off-the-shelf EDA products with respect to the performance and feature requirements of the design teams

• Putting together a tool flow and design methodology using in-house developed interface tools and scripts

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