An article on Physical Design

BY HARISH. K

Brindavan College of Engineering Bangalore

Department of Electronics & Communication Engg

    In integrated circuit design, physical design is a step in the standard design cycle which follows after the circuit design. At this step, circuit representations of the components (devices and interconnects) of the design are converted into geometric representations of shapes which, when manufactured in the corresponding layers of materials, will ensure the required functioning of the components. This geometric representation is called integrated circuit layout. This step is usually split into several sub-steps, which include both design and verification and validation of the layout. Modern day Integrated Circuit (IC) design is split up into Front-end design using HDL's, Verification and Back-end Design or Physical Design. The next step after Physical Design is the Manufacturing process or Fabrication Process that is done in the Wafer Fabrication Houses. Fab-houses fabricate designs onto silicon dies which are then packaged into ICs. Each of the phases mentioned above have Design Flows associated with them. These Design Flows lay down the process and guide-lines/framework for that phase. Physical Design flow uses the technology libraries that are provided by the fabrication houses. These technology files provide information regarding the type of Silicon wafer used, the standard-cells used, the layout rules (like DRC in VLSI).

   At 40nm and 28nm, lithographic limitations and atomistic doping greatly increase the burden on the design methodology. Variations are up, sensitivities are up, and at the same time the designs themselves are larger and encompass more building blocks than before. From a methodology point of         view, focus areas like signal integrity, power integrity, DFM and DFT all take on new complexities as a result. Open-Silicon’s 40nm and 28nm reference flows leverage the best in learning from Open-Silicon’s multiple EDA and foundry partners to put together a solution designed to meet Open-Silicon’s benchmark performance in terms of predictability and reliability