Si2 announces founding members of Open3D technical advisory board

AUSTIN, USA: The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) announced the founding members of their Open3D Technical Advisory Board (TAB), which is chartered to enable interoperable 2.5D and 3D design flows with open standards, providing common formats and interfaces.

The founding members of the Open3D TAB are: ANSYS, Atrenta, Cadence Design Systems, Fraunhofer Institute, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Intel, Invarian, Mentor Graphics, Qualcomm, R3Logic, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments.

Initial areas of focus for Open3D TAB members include developing standards to support:

• Definition of the power distribution network across the die of a 3D stack, a topic for which a contribution has already been received in response to the request for technology (RFT) that was released earlier in the year.

• Thermal design and analysis of an entire 3D stack, including thermal constraints between neighboring dies.

• Expression of design constraints into and out of the path-finding and floorplanning stage of the overall design process.

“The Mentor Graphics Calibre business unit has been working with Si2 to drive standards with the donation of iDRC and other OpenDFM efforts for the benefit of the overall industry for multiple process nodes, and we continue to support Si2’s efforts as the industry moves from 2D to 3D,” said Juan Rey, senior director of Calibre engineering. “In particular, we believe standards for defining and communicating thermal requirements among different design flows will be critical for advanced 3D solutions, and we applaud Si2’s effort to launch working groups to enable this and other cross platform solutions.”

“With Qualcomm’s focus on the mobile market, 3D architectures are definitively in our future,” says Dr. Riko Radojcic, director of Engineering at Qualcomm. “Laying a common foundation of standards in this emerging technology makes it easier to work with our industry partners in producing the next generation of ICs. Standards are a sort of a lubricant that facilitates potentially disruptive technology change.”

“3D technology touches upon every aspect of the semiconductor design and manufacturing supply-chain,” says Andy Brotman, VP of Design Infrastructure, GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “As our customers implement this technology, it is in our best interest to participate in the standardization of basic ground rules to enable ultimate success.”