Platform tapes out 180nm CMOS bus controller

Synopsys Inc.'s unified platform has been used to tape out a 180nm CMOS industrial bus controller. The company announced that mixed-signal semiconductor IC provider Creative Chips used its Galaxy Implementation Platform together with the Galaxy Custom Designer implementation solution as a unified platform to develop the controller which contains complex analog and digital blocks.

Lutz Porombka, managing director of Creative Chips explained that "A single platform for both custom and cell-based design gives us the productivity gains we need to implement our complex mixed-signal designs more quickly." She added that "Custom Designer's tight integration within the Galaxy Implementation Platform provided us with a streamlined design flow, allowing us to focus more on our design and less on tool integration issues."

The controller design contains a large digital logic core and custom digital and analog components, including PLLs, voltage regulators and embedded RAM. The challenge was to integrate this complex mixed-signal design on a cost-effective mainstream process while meeting its customer's tight schedule and die size requirements. The Custom Designer solution was used to complete the layout for custom digital and analog blocks, Synopsys' HSPICE circuit simulator was used for the pre-layout simulations, and the CustomSim FastSPICE simulator was used to verify the extracted netlists from the StarRC extraction tool. After final signoff using Synopsys' IC Validator for layout versus schematic and design rule checking, the design was successfully taped out.