Enabling designers to perform block and cell physical verification from within layout environments such as Cadence's Virtuoso is Mentor Graphics' Calibre Interactive. This latest version in a continuing series of upgrades to the popular physical verification environment gives Virtuoso users the same integrated cell, block, and full-chip verification environment that Mentor's IC Station tool users have had available to them.
Accessible directly from the layout environment, Calibre Interactive gives block/cell designers interactive access to design-rule checking and layout-versus-schematic checking. It also allows graphical debugging of verification results without leaving the layout environment. All three of these capabilities are invoked through a GUI that's called directly from the layout tool's pull-down menus.
With system-on-a-chip (SoC) design becoming more pervasive, most new designs incorporate a variety of full-custom, place and route, analog, memory, and mixed-signal design on a single chip. The Calibre tool set is independent of design style, enabling it to provide efficient design verification for any design without user intervention to optimize the rule file.
Calibre Interactive is fully compatible with the previous versions of Calibre, so Calibre users can employ existing in-ventories of full-chip rule files for block/cell verification. Designers also can use an extensive set of Calibre rules provided by Mentor Graphics' foundry partners, including Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, IBM, TSMC, and UMC.
Calibre Interactive is available now, starting at $80,000. Contact Mentor Graphics sales offices for demonstrations.
Mentor Graphics Corp., 8005 S.W. Boeckman Rd., Wilsonville, OR 97070; (503) 685-7000; www.mentor.com/dsm.
