X-FAB supports Mentor Graphics' Olympus-SoC place and route system

WILSONVILLE, USA: Mentor Graphics Corp. announced that X-FAB Silicon Foundries now supports Mentor’s Olympus-SoC place and route system across X-FAB’s wide range of advanced modular CMOS process technologies for digital and analog/mixed-signal (AMS) applications.

The Olympus-SoC system efficiently meets place and route challenges of sophisticated mixed-signal designs targeting X-FAB processes at 0.35 and 0.18 micrometers. Features in the Olympus-SoC product, such as multi-corner-multi-mode (MCMM) optimization for timing, power and signal integrity, on-chip variation support, concurrent timing and leakage optimization, and MCMM clock tree synthesis (CTS), ensure the largest and most complex designs can be fully optimized for performance, power and reliability, and made extremely robust for high-yield manufacturing.

In conjunction with X-FAB process technology, the Mentor Graphics IC design flow extended with the Olympus SoC product can help designers achieve higher productivity and reduce time to market with comprehensive, verified custom implementation solutions. X-FAB’s analog and mixed-signal technology is ideally suited for industrial, automotive and telecommunication applications.

Based on a mixed-signal CMOS process, X-FAB’s technology features core and process modules such as low Vt, low leakage, embedded non-volatile memory and high-voltage options. In addition, X-FAB offers a standard or thick top-metal layer, PIP (Polysilicon-Insulator-Polysilicon) and MIM (Metal-Insulator-Metal) capacitors, and high-resistance polysilicon. A variety of MOS and bipolar transistors also is available.

The Olympus-SoC solution for digital ASIC and mixed-signal SoCs joins other Mentor Graphics IC design solutions supported by X-FAB, including the IC Station schematic and custom layout editor, the Eldo SPICE simulation tool, the Questa AMS functional verification tool, and the Calibre physical verification and DFM platform.

Complete design kit support for Mentor tools, including the Olympus-SoC product, is available at the X-FAB Technical Information Center on X-FAB’s internet portal.

Thomas Ramsch, director of design support at X-FAB, said: “Our large, growing and diverse global customer base depends on us to deliver competitive technology and cost-optimized solutions. Customers who use Mentor Graphics EDA tools for IC design, including the Olympus SoC P&R system, can benefit from X-FAB’s collaboration with Mentor to provide leading-edge CMOS technology and a productive, modern AMS implementation solution.”

“We are very excited to support X-FAB and its customers in their adoption of Olympus-SoC,” said Pravin Madhani, general manager of the Mentor Graphics place and route group. “We built Olympus-SoC from the ground with the flexibility to address specialized applications such as X-FAB’s analog/mixed-signal and high-voltage IC business. X-FAB’s customers will benefit from Olympus-SoC’s extremely robust feature set and its seamless integration with the Calibre verification platform. Olympus-SoC is proven in numerous production tapeouts in multiple applications and across multiple nodes.”