There is Life Left in ASICs

摘要

The introduction of powerful design automation tools made the standard cell design paradigm an economically thriving one. A next generation of design tools will lift this paradigm to the next level, and ensure that ASICs will keep up with Moore's law. 1. Increased coupling between design, design automation and process teams is needed for leadership. This will be difficult for stand-alone foundries to achieve. A tight coupling between technology definition, library and chip image design, design tools and designers are essential to design next generation standard cell designs. 2. Efficient use of all options process technology provides us can only be obtained by very effective use of sufficiently smart design tools. An ASIC design style has been and will continue to be a useful abstraction to base these design tools on. 3. The ASIC sign-off business models will be changing. New design service and COT models will emerge. But ASICs as a standard cell design methodology will also be the cornerstone of these new offerings.