The new release of the Virtuoso platform (ICADVM18.1) offers groundbreaking analysis capabilities and an innovational new simulation-driven layout for more robust and efficient design implementation as well as extending our support for the most advanced process technologies. With this solution, we are able to significantly improve productivity through advanced methodologies and provide the most comprehensive set of solutions in the industry with an interoperable flow across chip, package, module and board. When I was in 5th grade, I always loved to hate the work-share related word problems in math. If one person can paint a fence around a park in 3 days, how long will it take five people to paint the same fence? To my nine-year-old logical mind, the answer was simple… much more quickly! And even though my Math teacher didn’t agree with my answer, it was "logically" correct. When multiple people work in parallel to complete a task, it does get done more quickly. Suppose that the job of painting the fence is given to a neighborhood contractor, Mia, and her team of painters. Mia assures the park authorities of a good job with a quick turnaround. And she delivers… So, how did Mia come through with her promise? First, she divided the fence into different sections and allotted each section to a different team member. She herself supervised the job to ensure that each section was painted perfectly. She rejected any section that was not up to the mark. In the end, she had a perfectly painted fence within the promised timeline. So, what happened when multiple people worked together on the painting job. Firstly, because the job was done in parallel, it got done quickly. Secondly, the contractor had the final say on the completed work. She approved a painted section of fence only when it was completed satisfactorily; otherwise she rejected it and asked her team members to make some improvements. In the end, Mia delivered an efficient, high-quality job, finished in much less time than what a single person would have taken. This is exactly the principle behind the new concurrent layout physical design methodology available in Layout XL. Industry trends reveal exponential growth in the complexity of chips; but, conventional hierarchical design flows dictate that only one person can work on a cellview at a time. This imposes a limitation because work can only be completed sequentially, which, in turn, puts tremendous stress on the individual designer. The introduction of the concurrent layout methodology presents a fundamental breakthrough in the efforts to change this picture. A design cellview has thousands of shapes and a single designer needs a long time to work on all of them. Why block edits on all shapes when they can be edited in parallel by another designer? This will certainly speed up editing, right? Concurrent layout methodology does exactly that by allowing multiple designers to work simultaneously on the same or different tasks related to different shapes in a design cellview. Responsibilities can be divided based on region or objects in such a way that designers can work in parallel contributing to a quick turnaround time and, as a result, increase the team productivity. Just like the fence painting job, where Mia managed her team as they completed multiple tasks in parallel, in concurrent layout, you can have one design manager and several designers working on the same cellview at the same time. The design manager partitions the design and divides the responsibilities among the designers based on the scope of edits needed. Every designer contributes by finishing (accomplishing) their task and saves their respective edits separately from the main design. This gives the design manager a chance to first review the changes and then decide if it is fine to merge them back into the main design. Benefits of Using Concurrent Layout Opting for team-based physical design editing using concurrent layout makes perfect sense because it: Increases productivity by considerably reducing development cycle time, in turn, bringing down the time to ship. Facilitates what-if analysis where updates made in individual design partitions can be reviewed before they are merged with the top design cellview. This allows designers to generate several results for comparison purposes and then pick the best overall implementation to be merged at the end. Stores only the incremental changes to the disk from the concurrently edited partition views, as a result, saving on expensive disk space. Provides an environment in which designers can work freely in respective partition views with the knowledge that work is ongoing in parallel in other partition regions and the main design cellview. Enables incremental Edit-In-Place partition views to complement the hierarchical editing design flow by saving all edits separately. These edits are merged into the hierarchical subcells only after they are verified in all reoccurring subcell masters. Related Resource User Guide Virtuoso Concurrent Layout User Guide Rapid Adoption Kit (RAK) Introduction to Virtuoso Concurrent Layout For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com . Contact Us For more information on the New Virtuoso Design Platform, or if you have any questions or feedback on the enhancements covered in this blog, please contact team_virtuoso@cadence.com . To receive similar updates about new and exciting capabilities being built into Virtuoso for our upcoming Advanced Nodes and Advanced Methodologies releases, type your email ID in the Subscriptions field at the top of the page and click SUBSCRIBE NOW. Sucharita Mehta and Gautam Kumar (Team Virtuoso)
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