Pulsic offers automated IC layout tool
The software creates multiple electrically-correct layouts directly from schematics allowing designers to explore a broad design space. It provides automatic constraint extraction based on netlist topology extraction and considers place and route concurrently, producing optimal-quality results.
Animate employs something called PolyMorphic Layout with a database and algorithmic architecture that derives many potential layout variations for a design. These are turned into multiple, complete, layouts that meet design rule and layout versus schematic checks (DRC/LVS) in minutes.
Animate’s flow reads in a schematic, automatically extracts design constraints, and then creates multiple layouts
"Designers can explore these complete layout options in a fraction of the time needed to produce just a single layout option by hand," said Pulsic in a statement. Since Animate produces layout results so quickly, parasitics are available for simulation early in the design process. The result is comparable to that of an expert manual layout, but is produced in a fraction of the time.
"As geometries shrink, and as leading-edge processes such as FinFETS reach the market, manual analog design is no longer sufficient," said Mark Williams, co-founder and CEO of Pulsic, in the same statement. "As DRC rules increase, iterations between layout and design are becoming onerous, but with Animate, you can generate multiple layouts, extract them all, and then choose the optimal one for the desired performance criteria. A much bigger problem space can be explored, with better results"
Animate is set up via a graphical user interface and constraints are derived automatically, but can be edited by the user. Use of Animate at an early design stage, with minimal constraints, can provide improve the accuracy of analog block size estimation during floorplanning compared with previous methods.
Pulsic did not indicate how much it is selling the software licenses for or under what terms and conditions.
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