Nice Press Release from CDN. Seems as if their products are positioned where the chip makers are headed. Sort of like Gretsky - he scored so many goals by going to the place where the puck was going to be...
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Monday November 22, 9:32 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
UMC Group Provides 0.18-Micron Process Validation for Cadence Assura HyperExtract Tool
Cadence Parasitic Extractor Gains Momentum with Second Major Validation
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 22, 1999--Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN - news), the world's leading provider of electronic design products and services, today announced deep-submicron validation of the Cadence© Assura(TM) HyperExtract parasitic extraction tool by UMC Group (Hsin-Chu, Taiwan).
UMC Group has now validated Assura HyperExtract on 0.25- and 0.18-micron chip manufacturing processes.
UMC Group calibrated Assura HyperExtract with the foundry's ``gold standard' three-dimensional (3-D) field solver on a comprehensive set of its test structures with geometries down to 0.18 micron. Assura HyperExtract consistently produced results that correlated very closely with the 3-D field solver, producing accuracy to within an average of 0.5 percent (3 percent bounded, worst-case). The consistency and predictability of these results led UMC Group to validate the Cadence tool as an extraction solution fully supported by the foundry.
Fu-Tai Liou, senior vice president, UMC Group, said, ``Our customers need access to a parasitic extractor that meets all their requirements for advanced manufacturing, while offering high accuracy and reliability. Assura HyperExtract performed well throughout our testing process, and we are very pleased to make the tool available to our customers as an option for parasitic extraction.'
Applications for Assura HyperExtract
UMC Group's qualification of Assura HyperExtract was executed under the umbrella of the Cadence AlanzaSM Foundry Partner Program, as part of its customer-owned tooling (COT) initiative. By using Assura HyperExtract to perform parasitic extraction, customers can obtain highly accurate interconnect estimates, helping them to achieve faster timing closure. This capability is critical to meeting the challenges of COT design, which requires the ability to optimize place-and-route and extraction.
In addition, because Assura HyperExtract is embedded in the Cadence Envisia(TM) place-and-route tool, customers who use the Envisia tool as part of their standard-cell application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) flow can achieve a high degree of extraction and analysis accuracy. The tight links between the tools are intended to allow this correlation.
``We are very pleased with UMC Group's validation of Assura HyperExtract, as it offers further proof of the tool's accuracy,' said Paul Estrada, corporate vice president, IC implementation marketing at Cadence. ``Joint UMC Group/Cadence customers can now rest assured that they have the highest-value parasitic extraction solution available.'
Pricing and Availability
UMC Group is distributing Assura HyperExtract, as part of the Envisia place-and-route tool, to mutual UMC Group and Cadence customers through its website (http://www.umcgroup.com). Supported interfaces include LEF/DEF and GDSII.
Assura HyperExtract is available on Unix-based platforms, and is U.S. list-priced at $125,000 (single-user, node-locked).
About UMC Group
UMC Group is a world-leading semiconductor foundry group consisting of five Taiwan based foundry companies, and the first dedicated foundry in Japan, Nippon Foundry Inc. (NFI). The scheduled merger of the five Taiwan based companies will become effective January 3, 2000. UMC Group is a leader in foundry technology and expects post-merger capacity to reach 2.4 million wafers per year in 2000. In 1999, UMC Group reached volume production for 0.18-um technology and created production-ready copper-interconnect technology. UMC Group has marketing and customer support offices located in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. UMC Group can be found on the web at www.umcgroup.com
About Cadence
Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design automation products, methodology services, and design services used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety of other electronics-based products. With more than 4,000 employees and 1998 annual sales of $1.2 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The Company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company, its products and services may be obtained from the World Wide Web at cadence.com. |
