September 14, 2011 -- Mentor Graphics Corp. today announced a collaboration with TSMC to support SmartFill functionality in the Calibre YieldEnhancer product for TSMC's manufacturing processes starting at 65nm. The analysis and automatic filling capabilities of the SmartFill solution let designers achieve IC-fill constraints with minimal impact on circuit performance in a single pass without manual customization or modification.

"We have worked closely with Mentor to create an effective fill solution for advanced nodes. SmartFill is designed to handle the new fill requirements of our most advanced process technologies," said Suk Lee, director of Design Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC. "Our collaboration with Mentor cell-based fill is particularly important because it makes writing advanced-node fill decks easier, while reducing run-time and output file size by placing cells rather than individual polygons on multiple layers."

New capabilities for advanced fill requirements

SmartFill integrates the full range of the Calibre analysis engines into the fill process to achieve fully optimized fill without manual iterations. It provides advanced capabilities such as multi-layer fill shapes and the ability to add fill cells, which are automatically inserted into a layout based on analysis of the design.

SmartFill uses continuous, multi-dimensional functions in place of linear pass-fail conditions, enabling finer resolution of complex fill algorithms that cannot be performed with single-dimensional design rules alone. This lets designers optimize for multiple factors such as density and perimeter.

Because SmartFill employs standard Calibre interfaces, it fits seamlessly into the user's existing design environment. It supports timing-aware fill with back annotation of fill shapes into all industry-leading design databases to enable final timing verification. It also allows designers provide a list of critical nets that receive special treatment during the fill procedure.