[SOLVED] Physical verification with TSMC CRN65LP v1.7a PDK

Dear all,

A few months ago I started working with the TSMC 65nm (CRN65LP v1.7a) PDK provided by
Europractice services. At present I'm testing the full design-flow (from the
schematic level to the post-layout simulations) through some basic exercises.
Does anyone know if the entire physical verification (DRC+LVS+RCX) is supported with Calibre?
Firsts DRC and LVS tests with Calibre worked out of the box, but I'm not
sure if the parastic extraction is well supported too (although some RCX files
are present in the <pdk_install_dir>/Calibre/xrc directory). On the other hand
it seems that only LVS and QRC are available with Cadence Assura, is it correct?
This is my first experience with the TSMC PDK so any other suggestion and/or public as well as private discussion
about this topic would be appreciated and very helpfull !!!
Thanks in advance...

Cheers,

luca

Hi luca
we have used TSMC 65nm (PDK v1.5a) in a few designs. Calibre flow included RCX/PEX is supported with some caveats. We have never touched Assura but is seems no DRC rules are provided. Let me know what the issues are with Calibre and see if I can help.
Cheers

Hi dgnani,

Thanks for your replay. I wrote to Europractice for more help. Calibre RCX is supported and my system administrator has been installed some additional specific files. Now in the <pdk_install_dir>/Calibre/rcx directory I should have all the required Calibre configuration files:

calibre.rcx
calview.cellmap
hcell
rules
source.added
xcell

I set up Calibre to run the parasitic extraction specifying PEX rule file, run directory and inputs but when I run the PEX and I retrive the following error:


Error while compiling rules file /export/elt83xl/disk0/users/pacher/usr/ep_lib/tsmc/tsmc65rf_PDK/Calibre/rcx/calibre.rcx:
Error INCL1 on line 15713 of /export/elt83xl/disk0/users/pacher/usr/ep_lib/tsmc/tsmc65rf_PDK/Calibre/rcx/calibre.rcx - problem with access, file type, or file open of this include file: ./rules.

The line mentioned in the error contains an include ./rules statement referred to as "xcalibre capacitance and resistance file". The file exists, I have read permissions and it's not empty. I retrive the same error if I work with local copies of the configuration files. Any suggestion?

Hi luca

it is a common problem with Calibre setups, the first rule file cannot include the second one. The simple way out is to modify the line mentioned in the error (you can try on a local copy of calibre.rcx first) replacing the relative path (./rules) with an absolute path ($PATH_TO_RULES/rules). Make sure you define the variable in your environment before starting Cadence. Also do a search of calibre.rcx for all INCLUDE statements and replace all relative paths with absolute ones.

Let me know if something else breaks.

After everything loads correctly make sure you verify all Calibre rule variables are set according to your targets. If you are doing analog design pay attention to STI stress and well-proximity effect extraction. read the provided docs.

Hi dgnani!

I modified the include directive following your hint. Now the Calibre PEX runs correctly and I can retrive an extracted netlist! So...many thanks for your suggestion! You have mentioned the documentation... unfortunately we found that the documentation provided with the basic Europractice PDK is very poor (I know from my FNAL collegues that the Mosis one is very large instead). I mark the thread as solved, but if any other designer would share or discuss more technicalities/settings about IC design (both analog and digital) with TSMC 65nm just write me an email to pacher@to.infn.it .

Cheers

luca