MANAGING COMPLEXITY AND TECHNOLOGY IN EDA TOOLS

Abstract

Device size continues to shrink, enabling exponential growth in microelectronics. Density (number of devices / area) is increasing by an order of magnitude every 6 years and speed (clock frequency in synchronous designs) is increasing by an order of magnitude every 8 years. On the other hand, as device size moves below quarter micron, certain physical effects become more important. Most noticeably, interconnect delay becomes dominant, power becomes more of a limiting factor and signal integrity issues can no longer be ignored. Thus, the EDA tool builder has to deal with opposite trends: Managing complexity and managing the increasing importance of physical effects. This talk presents an industrial perspective of the resulting changes in design methodology and tools expected in the near future, focusing on system design at a high level of abstraction ("system design") and at the physical level ("design planning").