May 22, 2012 -- Mentor Graphics Corp. today announced that GlobalFoundries is helping its customers improve reliability checking by adding Calibre PERC to select 28-nm bulk CMOS design enablement flows. Calibre PERC will give designers access to the new reliability-verification rules developed by the IBM Semiconductor Development Alliance (ISDA), augmented with GlobalFoundries specific checks to help prevent external latch-up. Using Calibre PERC's unique architecture, complex reliability rules that require the integration of logical (net list) and layout (GDS) information can be fully automated, eliminating manual spreadsheet-based efforts and reducing the chances of design errors.

"In the past, verification of latch-up immunity depended on manual layout checks and rough approximations of device and interconnect resistance using traditional mechanisms," said Bill Liu, Vice President of Design Enablement at GlobalFoundries. "Now our customers can perform accurate measurements and analysis automatically using Calibre PERC's data integration capability. For example, some of our customers are currently using PERC to accurately determine the resistance of the paths in complex output driver arrays as a function of device spacing. This allows them to easily and accurately detect points in the circuit where latch-up could be an issue and to make appropriate improvements."

GlobalFoundries' 32/28-nm solutions are based on the Gate First HKMG technology that has reached high-volume production in the company's Fab 1 facility in Dresden, Germany. This approach to HKMG offers advantages in terms of both scalability and manufacturability, enabling full scaling from 40nm in area and performance, while sharing the process flow, design flexibility, design elements and benefits of all previous nodes based upon poly SiON gate stacks.

The Calibre PERC product is capable of performing complex checks needed to address reliability issues, including electrostatic discharge (ESD), electrical overstress (EOS), errors arising from signals crossing multiple power domains, and advanced electrical-rule-checking (ERC) concerns. It is capable of revealing electrical violations that might otherwise result in short-term, long-term or even catastrophic electrical failure. It not only detects violations, but provides designers with a holistic environment for debugging circuit-reliability problems with an integrated view of circuit connectivity, topology, physical layout and design rules that is not available in any other tool. Like other Calibre products, the Calibre PERC solution uses the Mentor advanced SVRF and TVF (TCL verification) formats, for quick implementation of customized checks to detect electrical design issues.