Pyxis router selected for TSMC 28nm analog/mixed-signal reference flow

DAC 2010, AUSTIN, USA: Pyxis Technology Inc., the company innovating software solutions for the physical design and routing of custom integrated circuits (ICs), announced today that its NexusRoute-HPC (high performance custom) router has been selected for use in the TSMC 28nm Analog and Mixed-Signal (AMS) Reference Flow 1.0.

NexusRoute-HPC was used within the TSMC AMS Reference Flow to route both power and signal nets for a reference phase-locked loop (PLL) design containing roughly 10,000 devices using TSMC’s advanced 28nm silicon technology. Routing was done for all levels of hierarchy on a transistor-level design that was placed by Ciranova’s Helix product.

The Pyxis NexusRoute-HPC product delivers orders of magnitude faster routing speed and analysis for high-performance custom designs. The Pyxis NexusRoute-HPC custom layout solution optimizes the routing of advanced analog and mixed-signal designs and, when combined with design layout and placement tools, provides a powerful, interactive all-level hierarchical routing solution without the need for cell abstracts, leading to the improved performance and compaction of custom IC designs.

"With the number of designs having mixed-signal or analog content projected to grow to 70 percent of total non-memory ICs by 2012, the need for a more automation is becoming critical,” said Mitch Heins, CEO of Pyxis.

“TSMC’s new AMS Reference Flow with the Pyxis routing solution is a great step forward toward bringing together best-in-class tools and flows that will bring more automation to the analog / mixed-signal domain.”

“The addition of the Pyxis router to our AMS reference flow brings an entirely new level of automation to our customers who are doing complex analog and mixed-signal designs,” said Tom Quan, deputy director of design methodology and service marketing at TSMC. “TSMC has offered reference flows for digital IC implementation for some time and we are now leveraging our design flow experience to help analog and mixed-signal designers obtain a faster and smoother path to working silicon.”

Pyxis NexusRoute-HPC runs natively on the OpenAccess runtime model and can interface with any custom IC layout flow based on the OpenAccess database. NexusRoute-HPC also reads and writes standard layout interface formats LEF and DEF and works with a variety of libraries including parameterized cells (PCells), TSMC Analog Base CellsTM, standard cells and macros.