Design Tools, Flows and Library Aspects during the FE-I4 Implementation on Silicon Vladimir Zivkovic National Institute for Subatomic Physics Amsterdam, the Netherlands Microelectronics User Group (MUG) meeting Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics (TWEPP) 2011 Vienna, September 27 th 2011

MUG, Vienna, FEI4-A Architecture and Design Foundations 2 Vladimir Zivkovic Radiation hardness out of the box Good power distribution Essential when making the long columns Substrate isolation (T3) Essential when using standard cell synthesized logic Innovations - Region architecture (memory on pixel) - Modular approach and distributed design - Low current operation, fault tolerance, digital and mixed-signal Test Benches for Simulation Multi-site collaboration -> design repository necessary (SOS Cliosoft platform) vv 8M 130 nm CMOS Stack

MUG, Vienna, Layout Foundation 3 Vladimir Zivkovic Isolated NMOS / PMOS T3 isolates the switching activity of digital circuits from the substrate and other blocks - very convenient for modular (core) – based designs DM option chosen over LM for : More flexibility to provide good power distribution (low resistivity M8 and M7) Good shielding (M7 is less resistive, so M8 can be sacrificed to provide for a solid shield) Good for inter-block routing (low RC) Full MOSIS support Mind: local routing restricted to 3 metal layers due to bad local high density routing

MUG, Vienna, Standard Cell Library – ARM Fully characterized and qualified, low-power version also available, as well as SEU-resistant Extensive use of inherited connections –Some problems during delivery exchange experienced there due to the non- uniform distribution of the library 4 Vladimir Zivkovic All digital blocks placed in T3-isolated pwells A stable substrate (under T3 isolation) is guaranteed by enforcing a maximum distance of 100 μ m between substrate contacts

MUG, Vienna, Design Repository 5 Vladimir Zivkovic SOS design repository from cliosoft.com Repository hosted at LBNL and mirrored at all other sites

MUG, Vienna, Design Flow for FEI4 at NIKHEF (digital) 6 Vladimir Zivkovic RTL creation with Verilog (no VHDL!) Two-pass mapped flow for synthesis and DfT –Synopsys Design and DfT Compiler, Version B SP2 for linux Placement and Routing –Cadence Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) 9.1 –Cadence SoC Encounter v07.10-s219_1 (reference, backup) Physical Netlist Verification and Sign-off –Statistical Timing Analysis (STA) with.spef, Synopys PrimeTime, Version B SP2 for linux Physical Verification –Virtuoso _> Open Access –DRC, LVS, netlist extraction with parasitics with Calibre _32.2 ATPG –Synopsys TetraMAX ATPG, Version B SP2 for linux Simulations –Cadence NcSim 8.2 -> NcSim 9.2

MUG, Vienna, Readout Core Modification 7 Vladimir Zivkovic Layout boundary fixed Pin positions fixed Timing constraints the same 15% larger design had still to be fit in Design Flow going back and fourth between Synopsys and Cadence Top-level integration issues

MUG, Vienna, Design Flow for FEI4 at NIKHEF (analog) 8 Vladimir Zivkovic Schematic capture, layout creation –Virtuoso Simulations –MMSIM 7.0 Physical Verification –DRC –Assura OA (easy to use, primary) –Calibre _32.2 (final) –LVS –Assura OA –Calibre _32.2 Extraction –QRC EXT 7.12

MUG, Vienna, Design Verification Efforts Standalone block simulations with extracted parasitics Open Verification Methodology Environment (OVM) –This means that the real life commands/functions are converted into the testbench. 9 Vladimir Zivkovic Digital full chip simulations Parasitic capacitances, process variations, interconnect delays included Digital (block interconnect) extraction using Assura black-box approach

MUG, Vienna, Mixed-Signal Top-level Testbench 10 Vladimir Zivkovic Analog/Mixed-signal functionality check from the top-level Model driven test & verification development IC model Loadboard & instrument model Test description Each hardware component can be modeled at arbitrary level of abstraction

MUG, Vienna, ATPG and Test Assembly Flow 11 Vladimir Zivkovic