Essential Electronic Design Automation (EDA)

Porting Designs to New Processes

Larry:

Pretty much. Maybe they'll add some features. Moving a design to a later process is called porting. Some EDA tools help port (migrate) a chip design or cell library to a new process. Many processes are known as process shrinks, where only the feature size changes. Suppose we go from, say, a 0.18-micron process to a 0.13-micron process. We shrink the smallest feature size (gate length). Most cell libraries are scaled to the smallest feature size. So every other transistor dimension is shrunk proportionally. However, not all parameters (the resistances, capacitances, and other electrical properties) scale so nicely. The transistors and gates all have to be recharacterized to establish the new operating values. ...