Synopsys IC Compiler 2008.09 delivers a dramatic boost in IC designer productivity. The latest release features faster runtimes across the board, leading to a 2X to 3X speed up in overall turnaround time. This release also introduces new technology that speeds design closure including improved timing, variation aware clock tree synthesis, lower power, enhanced DFM, and signoff quality incremental design rule checking.

With this release, the recently announced Zroute technology delivering a 10 fold speed up in routing is now available as a standard feature to all IC Compiler customers.

Compared to the 2007.03 release, the IC Compiler 2008.09 release has demonstrated an average speed up of 2X across a broad set of customer designs. A total of 3X speed up may be achieved by enabling multi-threading on quad-core machines that are commonly used in the IC Compiler customer base. Synopsys has observed even higher speed up in select customer cases through methodology review and optimisation.

Key technologies leading to the increase in speed include enhanced placement optimisation, faster signal integrity closure and hold time fixing, faster multi-corner/multi-mode, improvements in multi-threaded placement and the newly released Zroute technology.

IC Compiler 2008.09 further speeds up design closure by introducing a number of new and enhanced technologies. Clock tree synthesis now includes concurrent multi-corner optimisation and new low power techniques. A new clock mesh capability is included to generate variation tolerant clock structures.

New DFM capabilities include via minimisation, redundant via optimisation and lithography friendly routing. Signoff quality design rule checking using foundry run sets can now be invoked from inside IC Compiler to perform incremental area based checking, helping reduce turnaround time from hours to minutes.

IC Compiler 2008.09 is available to current customers now. The release includes a quad-core license of Zroute technology as a standard feature. Many of the enhancements in 2008.09 are also available in the latest service pack of the current release for those customers who are unable to immediately consider a platform change.

More information: http://www.synopsys.com