ANSYS-Synopsys Collaboration: Q&A with John Lee and Jacob Avidan

Shifting Left with ANSYS

In 2017, Synopsys and ANSYS® partnered to take the best of ANSYS’ power integrity and reliability offerings and create an integrated flow with Synopsys implementation to drive robust design optimization. Following the release of RedHawk™ Analysis Fusion in 2018, customers have shared positive feedback on productivity and design quality impact that have helped drive further innovations on this platform. We sat down with John Lee, VP/General Manager of the Semiconductor division at ANSYS, and Jacob Avidan, Sr. VP of Signoff products at Synopsys, to get their views on the results of this collaboration and how the ANSYS-Synopsys collaboration helps address the challenges of emerging technologies.

Q: What do you see as some of the emerging technology trends?

John Lee:

From our business view, significant trends and challenges we help address are related to power and reliability in 7nm and below process nodes, ultra-low voltages of operation, and multiphysics reliability issues in advanced packaging, such as 3DIC.

Jacob Avidan:

In addition, the transition to 5/3nm and beyond, as well as the low-voltage dynamics and yield robustness associated with them, has been a big jump and learning experience for customers. With respect to power rail analysis, more attention has been given to design robustness and reliability for an increasing number of companies, especially at lower nodes. Power integrity issues are increasingly included as a primary concern rather than an afterthought. This is a bigger concern as more companies are now exploring 3DIC designs.

Q: What kinds of design challenges are inherent in these emerging technologies that might be more difficult to address?

John Lee:

The list of care-abouts from our collective customer base include:

• Power Integrity
• EM/IR signoff—this is becoming as challenging as timing signoff
• FinFET thermal and reliability issues
• Process variability
• Timing closure
• Margin management
• Power grid design challenges at 7nm:
  • There’s a 5x increase in grid complexity, compared to 16nm. Power grids have 10B+ nodes
  • 500mV—Ultra-low voltage computing means margins are razor thin, and variability is severe
  • The need for increased power noise scenario coverage for greater signoff confidence to achieve the desired Fmax on silicon.

Jacob Avidan:

The design challenges resulting from EM/IR can no longer be addressed at the very end of the design cycle. EM/IR needs to be thoughtfully built into the design process right from the beginning. ‘Shifting Left’ is required to drive the right methods into the process. Our recent announcement with Fusion Compiler is a big part of that vision. Giving power to the block designer to not only analyze but also fix issues early in the design cycle at the block level before full-chip integration has provided significant productivity benefits.

Q: How does RedHawk Analysis Fusion address some of these key challenges?

Jacob Avidan:

Enabling RedHawk Analysis Fusion earlier in physical design flows helps designers achieve 5X increase in productivity and faster convergence during signoff with better QoR using ANSYS’ industry-standard power integrity and reliability analyses. Leveraging signoff-quality solutions during the in-design phase provides early visibility into design issues and allows them to be fixed up front. Specifically, new innovative placement, clock tree synthesis, and post-route IR-driven optimization strategies have enabled users to reduce manual work and maximize design robustness through IR recovery. Recently, designers were able to eliminate 95% of IR drop violations using RedHawk Analysis Fusion on a large graphics processor design.

John Lee:

In-design rail flow enabled by RedHawk Analysis Fusion allows the P&R engineering team to easily run the RedHawk engines under the hood and automatically deliver signoff-quality results back to IC Compiler II for fixing. This drives better decisions for achieving PPA goals early. Also, thermal reliability is a key concern in FinFET designs. By enabling self-heating analysis during in-design, physical design engineers can analyze and fix reliability issues earlier by doing thermal-aware EM checks.

Q: How is the ANSYS-Synopsys relationship progressing?

John Lee:

We are excited about our progress and momentum addressing advanced-node needs with RedHawk-SC, built on ANSYS SeaScape, the world’s first custom-designed big data architecture for electronic system design and simulation. All of ANSYS’ 7nm customers are using RedHawk-SC for power integrity signoff with great feedback, and it is enabled for RedHawk Analysis Fusion for in-design IC Compiler II optimizations.

Jacob Avidan:

Great! As we deploy our new Fusion Design Platform, our customers are excited and look forward to achieving even better results with EM/IR integration into the flows.

Q: Can you share some customer highlights resulting from this partnership?

Jacob Avidan:

Customers have given great feedback on the benefits this partnership provides, primarily in two areas. The first is the ease-of-use of in-design rail analysis that enables physical design block designers to do IR analysis work early and avoid surprises down the road. Secondly, the most important component is the IR-driven optimization opportunities we are giving customers using the industry signoff-quality data—including full automation beginning from placement. Customers have reported amazing results, as mentioned earlier, and we look forward to their continued success and being a part of that.

It has been an exciting journey collaborating at the engineering level with ANSYS, customers, and foundries, and it has produced great innovation and customer results.

John Lee:

I agree, we have seen our mutual customers benefit from this great relationship in driving faster schedules and building in a scalable model for best design robustness. In fact, our customers have taken this relationship a step further—they are driving initiatives and working closely with us on adjacent applications to further drive the benefits.

Q: Thank you for your sharing your insights with us. Any closing remarks?

Jacob Avidan:

There are plenty of opportunities for more technology innovation and we have an exciting pipeline. Stay tuned!

John Lee:

We look forward to continuing our synergistic partnership and innovating solutions to delight our customers!