Siemens Digital Industries Software is working with TSMC on design tool certifications that will enable the world's largest independent contract manufacturer of semiconductor products to offer cloud-enabled IC design in its foundry offering. This was presented as part of a virtual industry event.
Siemens Digital Industries Software used the virtual and globally organized TSMC 2021 OIP Ecosystem Forum [1] at the end of October to present the series of new design tool certifications resulting from ongoing collaboration with the long-standing foundry partner - including the aforementioned milestones for cloud-enabled IC design as well as tools and environments for TSMC 3DFabric, a comprehensive family of 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies.
The partnership brings together two industry leaders on an equal footing: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSMC) is the world's third largest semiconductor manufacturer after Intel and Samsung. The manufacturer's business model is geared towards taking over the production of semiconductor chips for fabless companies such as AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Conexant, Marvell, VIA and Broadcom.
The Taiwanese company was founded in 1987 with state support. TSMC is considered extremely profitable and has grown rapidly - by an average of 21.5% per year over the last 20 years. In 2020, annual sales amounted to USD 45.5 billion and profits to USD 17.6 billion.
Two partners with clout
The Siemens Digital Industries Software division was created partly on the basis of the acquisition of UGS - the 3D CADCAM pioneer originally known as Unigraphics and belonging to aircraft manufacturer McDonnell Douglas.
An intermediate step was Siemens PLM - UGS had already combined its Mechanical & Electronic Design/Engineering software packages under the term Product Lifecycle Management. The German company acquired Mentor Graphics in 2017 and formed the Electronic Design Automation division, which has been operating as Siemens EDA since 2021.
Siemens' EDA offerings, which have now been certified for TSMC's N3 and N4 processes, include the Calibre nm-Platform, a physical verification solution for the verification steps grouped under IC signoff, and the Analog FastSPICE-Platform, a circuit verification tool for analog nanometer, RF, mixed-signal and memory circuit designs that can also be used for custom digital circuits.
Siemens and TSMC have also worked closely on process certifications for the Aprisa place-and-route solution to help joint customers achieve smooth and rapid success on silicon using this tool in combination with the foundries' advanced processes.
"TSMC continues to develop innovative silicon processes that enable our joint customers to bring ICs to market that are among the most advanced in the world," said Joe Sawicki, executive vice president, IC-EDA at Siemens Digital Industries Software.
Siemens' support for the partner's latest processes also extends to TSMC 3D fabric technology. The company has successfully completed the design requirements for TSMC's design flows. As part of the qualification process, Siemens has extended its Xpedition Package Designer tool to support Integrated Fan-Out Wafer Level Packaging handling of design rules with automatic avoidance and correction.
Calibre 3DSTACK, DRC and LVS are also certified for the latest TSMC 3D fabric technologies, including InFO, CoWoS and TSMC SoIC. For customers, these enablement milestones result in shorter design and signoff cycles, and therefore fewer errors associated with manual intervention.
Siemens has also worked with TSMC to develop a Design for Testability (DFT) flow for TSMC's 3D silicon stacking architecture. Tessent provides such a DFT solution based on hierarchical DFT, SSN (Streaming Scan Network), extended TAPs (Test Access Ports) and IEEE 1687 IJTAG (Internal Joint Test Action Group) networking technologies. They are all IEEE 1838 compliant.
Improved performance in cloud environments
Designed for scalability, flexibility and ease of use, the solution helps customers optimize the resources associated with IC test technology. "Siemens is increasing its importance to TSMC's OIP ecosystem by providing more features and solutions to support our technologies," said Suk Lee, Vice President of Design Infrastructure Management Division at TSMC.
Through close collaboration between Siemens and TSMC, Calibre tools recently demonstrated dramatic performance and scaling improvements in a cloud computing environment at one of the world's leading IC design companies.
www.sw.siemens.com
www.tsmc.com
References:
[1] https://www.tsmc.com/static/english/campaign/oip2021/index.htm
