Silicon Frontline Technology, Inc. (SFT), an Electronic Design Automation (EDA) company in the post-layout verification market, announced today that Lattice Semiconductor, Inc. (NASDAQ: LSCC), the provider of innovative FPGA and PLD semiconductor solutions, picked Silicon Frontline’s ESRA (ElectroStatic discharge Reliability Analysis) software for fast, full-chip ESD (ElectroStatic Discharge) analysis. ESRA improves the reliability and quality of semiconductors offered by Lattice.
“Lattice is focused on providing customers with the industry’s lowest-power, lowest-density, lowest-cost programmable logic devices and full-chip ESD design validation is a critical part of protecting the integrity of our products,” stated Choon-Hoe Yeoh, Senior Director EDA Tools and Methodologies at Lattice. “After extensive evaluations of various options, we selected Silicon Frontline’s ESRA software as our standard full- chip ESD sign-off solution for all our FPGA and CPLD designs because it meets our capacity, accuracy, ease- of-use and cost requirements.”
“We are proud to have Lattice Semiconductor select our ESD software to verify and improve the quality of their devices,”said Yuri Feinberg, SFT CEO. “Because of today’s requirements to support multiple power domains, the demands on designers, with respect to ESD analysis, continue to escalate. ESD events are responsible for over 25% of silicon failures. Verifying nanometer designs with multiple power domains before silicon test, with our software, can avoid re-designs and re-spins, leading to better quality silicon and satisfied customers.”
ESRA provides a full-chip ESD analysis solution. It delivers extraction, simulation, analysis, and debugging capability in one integrated environment. Highlighted resistance and current density violations permit designers to perform layout corrections at any time in the design process.
Why ESD Analysis Is Important
Today’s advanced process technologies create reliability challenges for IC designers. Thinner gate oxides and narrower wires, coupled with multiple power domains, significantly increase the threat of ESD failures. ESD failures are most often only identified in silicon testing, leading to re-designs and re-spins.
Silicon Frontline’s Products
ESRA offers designers comprehensive verification and optimization strategies to improve ESD protection. It allows designers to verify the full chip for ESD reliability; pinpoint areas susceptible to failure; work on pre-
and post-LVS (Layout Versus Schematic) clean designs; handle CDM (Charged Device Model), MM (Machine Model) and HBM (Human Body Model) ESD events; and optimize ESD device area.
F3D (Fast 3D) is used for fast 3D extraction, and R3D (Resistive 3D) is used for 3D extraction and analysis of large resistive structures. F3D are chosen for their nanometer and Analog Mixed Signal (A/MS) design verification accuracy, and R3D for analysis that leads to improvements in the reliability and efficiency of semiconductor power devices.
Target applications include SOC, memory, Analog Mixed Signal (A/MS), image sensor, power device and high-speed designs.
