Integrated mixed-technology design environment to support micro-electro-mechanical systems development

摘要

Abstract: A major hurdle to the development of Micro ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) resides on the lack ofcommunication link between the mechanical (or physical)world and the electronic world. Within a developmentphase, each team handles the tools traditionally usedin its disciplines without any common interface. Whenusing field solvers, e.g. finite element methods, MEMSengineers identify material properties and boundaryconditions, and built a mesh, so the tool can run a 3Dfinite elements solution. The tool can predict theamount of stress and strain in the structures, themovement or any other interesting characteristics, butnone of this information can be automaticallytransferred to an IC design tool. In addition, thestraightforward advances within the latest developmentsof the mainstream semiconductor industry is the use ofalready available intellectual property (IP) in thedevelopment of systems optically matched to the endproduct specifications. These prospects call for a newgeneration of design tools that combines aspects of EDAand mechanical/thermal/fluidic CAD. The new productsuite presented in this paper offers an integratedsolution allowing a continuous design flow fromfront-end to back- end. The end objective is to bringto the system level designer, a complete design flow,down to the chip level, anchored on design re-use andreliable system-level simulation, thus leveragingstandard IP products for the realization ofsophisticated miniature systems, at low cost.!10