Synopsys announces new additions to Liberty to significantly speed up timing closure

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Synopsys Inc. announced the completion of an initiative to unify and standardize on-chip variation (OCV) extensions to the open-source Liberty library format, the de-facto modeling standard for integrated circuit (IC) implementation and signoff.

Recent extensions that complete the unified OCV feature set were ratified on August 1, 2014 by the Liberty Technical Advisory Board (LTAB), an IEEE-ISTO federation member program representing the broad semiconductor design ecosystem.

The new variation technology is immediately supported by Synopsys' design platform ecosystem comprised of SiliconSmart® library characterization, IC Compiler place and route, Library Compiler library checker and compiler, and PrimeTime ADV signoff timing and noise analysis solutions.

LTAB members collaborated to consolidate various modeling formats such as advanced on-chip variation (AOCV), parametric on-chip variation (POCV) and statistical on-chip variation (SOCV) into a single, unified open-source standard for industry-wide use, known as the Liberty Variation Format (LVF) extensions.

Unanimously approved by the LTAB board, the latest LVF additions include extensions for slew-load dependent transition and constraint sigma variation tables. These extensions provide designers with a modeling technique that may further reduce timing margins for advanced process nodes, including FinFET, thereby boosting timing closure turnaround-time.

This achievement represents the culmination of a phased approach in collaboration with industry leaders to ensure broad ecosystem enablement from foundry data and model availability, library characterization and modeling know-how, EDA tool chain support, and ROI impact assessment. The board also welcomed some new members, including Samsung.