Si2 Announces Open Library Modeling Meeting at DAC; Results of Year-Long Study Released To Industry.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) today is inviting industry participation in a broad new initiative to address critical issues in characterization and modeling, such as accuracy, consistency, security, and process variations, in the library representations currently used to design integrated circuits (IC). The result of a year-long technical study of the issues will be presented in an Open Meeting at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) on June 15, 2005 at 10AM in Anaheim, Calif.

"Silicon-accurate libraries are quickly becoming a huge bottleneck at finer process geometries," says Dale Hoffman, Director of Business Development and CTO, IBM Engineering & Technology Services division. "The complexity and quantity of sensitive parameters must be accounted for during characterization to support the design tools for the latest technology nodes. This initiative effectively decouples the library modeling format from the EDA application allowing greater flexibility and choices for the end user or IP provider."

Rahul Goyal, Director, EDA Business, Intel adds, "Design closure in the presence of an increasing set of intertwined constraints has become a growing challenge. This requires fresh thinking in modeling their effects, based on improved understanding of the underlying physics. Design-flow performance and runtimes, as well as capacity limits, also have become all too common IC design issues."

Last year at DAC, the Design Technology Council, an organization of senior design technology leaders from leading semiconductor and systems companies, sponsored a summit meeting to discuss these problems with other IDMs, leading EDA vendors and IP library providers. As a result of that meeting a Library Working Group (LWG) was formed with representatives from Freescale, HP, IBM, Intel, LSI Logic, Philips, and Sun to investigate the issue complexities and recommend potential solutions. Over the last year the LWG has researched the problems and worked with leading EDA vendors to formulate a proposed plan of action. Preliminary technology donations have been offered from Synopsys, Cadence, Magma, IBM, and others.

The purpose of the Open Meeting at DAC this year is to present the Library Working Group findings and obtain input from the industry on proposed solutions that will address both technical and business requirements of semiconductor, library, and EDA companies.

For more information and to register for the meeting, visit http://www.si2.org. (Registration is not required, it is for logistical planning only)

About Si2

Si2 is an organization of industry-leading semiconductor, systems, EDA and manufacturing companies focused on improving the way integrated circuits are designed and manufactured in order to speed time-to market, reduce costs, and meet the challenges of sub-micron design. Si2 is uniquely positioned to enable collaboration through a strong implementation focus driven by its member companies. Si2 focuses on developing real solutions to industry challenges, not static standards. Si2 was founded in 1988 as CAD Framework Initiative, Inc. Today Si2 represents over 76 companies involved in all parts of the silicon supply chain throughout the world.