Integrated mixed-technology design environment to supportmicro-electro-mechanical systems development,

摘要

Abstract: A major hurdle to the development of Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) resides on the lack of communication link between the mechanical (or physical) world and the electronic world. Within a development phase, each team handles the tools traditionally used in its disciplines without any common interface. When using field solvers, e.g. finite element methods, MEMS engineers identify material properties and boundary conditions, and built a mesh, so the tool can run a 3D finite elements solution. The tool can predict the amount of stress and strain in the structures, the movement or any other interesting characteristics, but none of this information can be automatically transferred to an IC design tool. In addition, the straightforward advances within the latest developments of the mainstream semiconductor industry is the use of already available intellectual property (IP) in the development of systems optically matched to the end product specifications. These prospects call for a new generation of design tools that combines aspects of EDA and mechanical/thermal/fluidic CAD. The new product suite presented in this paper offers an integrated solution allowing a continuous design flow from front-end to back- end. The end objective is to bring to the system level designer, a complete design flow, down to the chip level, anchored on design re-use and reliable system-level simulation, thus leveraging standard IP products for the realization of sophisticated miniature systems, at low cost.!10