Physical Design And Architectural Design

摘要

Historically, in the semiconductor-design flow, tape-out came after the last stages of the physical-design creation and verification. It was the final step before the design entered the manufacturing process, and it typically occupied less than 20% of the project-development schedule. Generally, a group other than the design team performed the tapeout and used separate design tools to construct a manufacturable view of the design. This division of labor no longer holds true.rnMost of today's big digital ICs are actually SOCs (systems on chips). As a result, the engineering-design team has to stay involved through bothrnthe block design and the physical design. The shift in physical-design tools to incorporating gate and sizing changes you base on physical-synthesis and -optimization tools now requires the involvement of engineering-design personnel through tapeout, as well. Issues that are now part of the physical-design flow include gate sizing, logic changes and optimization, buffer insertion, split-path creation, signal integrity and shielding, and IR-drop analysis. The analysis of these issues requires both the physical-design team and the block-design team.