Timing analysis tool addresses speed limitations

Magma Design Automation has unveiled Tekton, a timing analysis platform that is claimed to offer higher capacity and faster runtimes than traditional tools, without sacrificing accuracy.

Tekton can efficiently run multi-scenario analysis on low-cost hardware without requiring a large number of expensive servers and software licenses.

Designed to more efficiently handle on-chip-variation (OCV), composite current source (CCS) models and crosstalk analysis, Tekton is claimed to overcome the speed, capacity and accuracy limitations of traditional static timing analysis (STA) tools.

Tekton is said to meet the runtime, capacity and accuracy requirements for sign-off through an architecture designed to accommodate more than 100 million instances and greater than 15 PVT corners.

Its multi-threaded architecture provides near-linear scaling on up to 24 CPUs.

For a single timing scenario, with OCV and crosstalk enabled, Tekton performs timing analysis on designs greater than 10 million cells in minutes.

The Tekton platform includes QCP, a fast, high-capacity, full-chip extractor that delivers results with the accuracy of the industry standard, Quickcap.

QCP's architecture enables efficient multi-corner extraction with minimal increases in runtime as additional process, voltage and temperature (PVT) corners are added for each process node migration.

Built on a similar architecture to Tekton, QCP is fully multi-threaded for near-linear performance on up to 32 CPUs.

Tekton and QCP can be used together in a single STA timing session for fast 'what-if' analysis on engineering change orders (ECOs).

Complex chip designs require accurate timing analysis to be performed across many scenarios (operating modes and PVT corners).

Coupling Tekton's timing analysis with QCP's extraction in a single session allows designers to simultaneously iterate through the timing closure process of analysing, fixing and extracting nets.

The ability to make changes and get accurate timing results can reduce the amount of time spent in trial-and-error ECO loops.

Tekton also performs fast, multi-scenario analysis on a single machine and provides the accuracy of existing sign-off solutions.

Over a variety of designs with five to 50 scenarios enabled, Tekton performs timing analysis, with OCV and crosstalk enabled, in less than one hour on a single CPU.

To address the timing closure challenges design teams face at 40nm and below, Tekton supports advanced OCV (AOCV) margin reduction techniques.

By incorporating AOCV into timing closure flows, design teams can minimise global pessimistic margins that lengthen tape-out schedules and potentially increase die sizes.

For critical path and net analysis, Tekton and QCP offer high-accuracy modes that utilise Tekton's integrated Spice engine and QCP's accurate extraction.

Tekton and QCP are in limited release and general availability will begin in June 2010.

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