GLOBALFOUNDRIES Announces Market Readiness of its 20 nm Production Process

GLOBALFOUNDRIES has showed that it is ready to evaluate its customers’ 20 nm designs by effectively taping out a test chip utilizing flows from major EDA vendors Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, Magma Design Automation and Cadence Design Systems.

It is an important landmark regarding market readiness of GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 20 nm production process. The company’s EDA vendors have showed that their place-and-route (P&R) tech files and tools can support the sophisticated rules related with the 20 nm process. The flows comprise library preparation sequencing for double patterning technology and a sophisticated lithography method that augments latest challenges for designers at 20 nm and above.

Each EDA vendor contributed a huge placed and routed design for the implementation of double patterning required by the 20 nm test chip. Every design full verified against 20 nm sign-off verification decks and confirmed by GLOBALFOUNDRIES before tape out. All designs are closed quickly due to already existing 20 nm partnership with every EDA vendor for a successful tapeout.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES has shown complete support for all the important activities in a 20 nm P&R flow such as post route optimization, routing hold fixing, clock tree synthesis, placement and double patterning library preparation. The company has also worked closely with every EDA vendor to incorporate the essential configuration and support for mapping files and technology.

The flow will also describe foundry support for physical verification, static timing analysis and extraction. GLOBALFOUNDRIES will offer the complete vendor flow scripts, libraries and design to clients willing to assess the 20 nm technology.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ Senior Vice President of Design Enablement, Mojy Chian stated that the company’s model of early partnership with EDA vendors gears up the entire development cycle, and offers accessibility to clients to the internal operations of the process, which in turn allows them to target their designs towards the most sophisticated production functionalities with confidence.