Jan 13, 2014

An Update on the OpenPDK for IC Design (by Daniel Payne)

IC designers use EDA tools to implement their logical and physical design, and these tools require foundry-specific information for:



  • Design Rule Checking (DRC)
  • Layout Versus Schematic (LVS)
  • Library Symbols
  • Parasitic EXtraction (PEX)


This foundry information is called a Process Design Kit or PDK for short. Now put yourself in the place of the foundry or IDM, and you want to support EDA tools from multiple vendors like: Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Silvaco and Tanner EDA. That adds up to a lot of QA and PDK development effort to support so many EDA vendors and tools. There has to be an easier way to create PDKs instead of one vendor at a time.




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