At the 40Design Automation Conference to be held in Anaheim, California this June, TSMC will announce TSMC Reference Flow Release 4.0 as part of its on-going effort to proactively anticipate and address new design implementation challenges associated with nanometer technologies.

TSMC Reference Flow 4.0 is the first reference flow to include dual physical implementation tracks built around commercial EDA tools from both Synopsys and Cadence. This dynamic feature provides design flexibility and is expected to further lower the barriers to acceptance.

TSMC became the first foundry to include reference flows as a standard design offering when it announced the availability of Reference Flow 1.0 in April, 2001 and since then, has added reference flow releases that cover a spectrum of design implementation needs for different technology nodes and different design characteristics.

Take Advantage of Nanometer Technologies

Reference Flow 4.0 pays special attention to some new technical issues that appear challenging in the nanometer frontier. These issues include:

Signal Integrity -- Conducts concurrent timing and signal integrity (SI) closure, including cross-talk prevention, analysis, and repair. Wire tapering and multiple via insertion address signal electromigration issue. De-coupling cell insertion addresses dynamic IR-drop.

Power and Speed Optimization -- Takes advantage of the power and speed trade-off available through multiple-Vt libraries and explores the optimal point that meets the design specification.

Design For Manufacturability -- Enables direct manufacturability in TSMC's namometer technologies by incorporating metal halation rules, redundant via insertion, dummy metal/OD/poly insertion and analysis, and process variation modeling.

Consistent Delivery

Along with the evolution of process technologies, TSMC has anticipated the design challenges for each
new process technology generation and has identified new design implementation issues. TSMC's
design flow evolution consistently delivers a packaged flow that results in high quality designs and easy-
to-use interfaces. To date, over 500 designers from over 300 companies have downloaded at least one
of three previous reference flows from TSMC-Online.