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Berti

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Automated Layout Generation
Mar 18^th, 2010, 3:09am

Dear all,

I work together in a company with many "traditional" analog designers. Analog layout are therefore exclusively done by hand.

I wonder whether some of you guys have (practical!) experience with tools for automated layout generations, features of VirtuosoXL, or own pcells?
Do they really speed up the layout generation? How do you make analog layouts?

Thanks for sharing experience!

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EricF New Member Offline Posts: 2	Re: Automated Layout Generation Reply #1 - Mar 30^th, 2010, 3:53pm Hi Berti, We have an automated AMS layout generation tool called Helix, with a handful of companies now using at sub-65nm geometries. �If you send an email to info@ciranova.com and tell us what you want to do, we can point you to a user.
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Steve_S

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Posts: 8
Tempe, AZ

Re: Automated Layout Generation
Reply #2 - Mar 30^th, 2010, 5:13pm

Hi Berti,

There's a company nearby in Tempe,AZ that seems to have an interesting tool.
I have NOT used it but if I ever get the chance, I plan to check it out.
They (the development team) seems pretty hungry to get on the map so I'm
certain they'd be delighted to provide a detailed demonstration.

I believe the tool is called AnalogRails.
You can check out their website if interested.

http://www.analograils.com/

Best,
Steve

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Berti

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Posts: 356

Re: Automated Layout Generation
Reply #3 - Apr 1^st, 2010, 12:37am

Thanks for the answers!

I know that automated AMS layout tools exist, I have seen the demos of analograils, and I have already used LayoutXL from Cadence (the autorouter etc. is however not properly set up in my company).

I am interested in real experience of designers. Is it really faster to use this tools or is it just a marketing of EDA vendors? What else apply companies to speed up the AMS layout generation (real experience, not just in theory)?

Cheers

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ywguo

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Posts: 943
Shanghai, PRC

Re: Automated Layout Generation
Reply #4 - Apr 16^th, 2010, 5:55am

Hi Berti,

I am a circuit designer. I am familiar with traditional Virtuoso Layout Editor, but not Layout-XL. In the past 3 years, I found the layout engineers were using Layout-XL. I tried it for a current-steering layout myself 3 years ago.

I found sometimes it cannot speed up the work. For eg., I don't know how to put an current-source array using layout-XL.

I don't know the auto route in layout-XL. But it has some good points. It's easy for a designer to review the layout using layout-XL. It shows the connections of devices in layout-XL, which reduces the chance of an LVS error. Obviously it reduces the iteration of DRC and LVS.

Best Regards,
Yawei

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