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  3. encounter Digital Implementation system tool - layout i...

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encounter Digital Implementation system tool - layout issue

hon cheong
hon cheong over 15 years ago

I have two questions regarding the encounter Digital Implementation system tool.

1. Using the digital implementation system tool, after doing floorplanning, place and route, the layout view for the standard cells are in abstract form. how can I view the layout view of those standard cells?
(I have include .lib and .lef files in the digital implementation system tool prior to synthesis).

2.If I want to import the layout to virtuoso from encounter digital implementation tool, I first save the synthesis result in DEF file format. In the DEF In dialog box, I am required to fill in "used Ref Library Names".
While I am using IBM process and found the .lef and .lib files in the "ARM_IBM_130nm8RF_4.0 " folder, I am unable to find any other DFII library that contains all the standard cells. Is that supposed to have one library that contains all the layout views of the standard cells?

Thank you.

Regards,
Hon Cheong

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  • Kari
    Kari over 15 years ago

     Hi Hon,

    EDI is not meant for viewing the full layouts of std cells, macros, IOs, etc. The .lib files contain timing and other logical info, and the .lef files contain the abstracted physical info. To see the full layout of your design, you will need to bring it into Virtuoso, as you have already guessed. There are a couple of ways to do that. You can use OA or you can stream gds out of EDI and into Virtuoso. I think you can also bring a DEF from EDI into virtuoso, but I don't think that's a very common method and there is other setup involved. I don't have any experience with OA, and it has been many years since I've imported DEF, so I will explain the gds method here.

    In EDI, there is a streamOut command. You provide a map file that maps the layer names used in EDI to the gds stream layer numbers for the process. You can either stream out just references to the cells (the default) or use the -merge option to include the std cell/macro/etc. gds files. (The gds files may exists somewhere in your ARM folder). If you use the -merge option, then you should be able to just stream the EDI gds into Virtuoso and then see your whole design. If you don't use merge, then you must already have DFII libraries of your std cells or other design pieces that the EDI gds can reference when you stream it in. Sometimes a design kit or library will come with the DFII libraries already, but sometimes only the gds is given, so you create these DFII libraries yourself if you want to. It sounds like they weren't included for you, so I would look for the std cell gds and try the -merge option of EDI's streamOut command as a starting point.

    - Kari

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  • Kari
    Kari over 15 years ago

     Hi Hon,

    EDI is not meant for viewing the full layouts of std cells, macros, IOs, etc. The .lib files contain timing and other logical info, and the .lef files contain the abstracted physical info. To see the full layout of your design, you will need to bring it into Virtuoso, as you have already guessed. There are a couple of ways to do that. You can use OA or you can stream gds out of EDI and into Virtuoso. I think you can also bring a DEF from EDI into virtuoso, but I don't think that's a very common method and there is other setup involved. I don't have any experience with OA, and it has been many years since I've imported DEF, so I will explain the gds method here.

    In EDI, there is a streamOut command. You provide a map file that maps the layer names used in EDI to the gds stream layer numbers for the process. You can either stream out just references to the cells (the default) or use the -merge option to include the std cell/macro/etc. gds files. (The gds files may exists somewhere in your ARM folder). If you use the -merge option, then you should be able to just stream the EDI gds into Virtuoso and then see your whole design. If you don't use merge, then you must already have DFII libraries of your std cells or other design pieces that the EDI gds can reference when you stream it in. Sometimes a design kit or library will come with the DFII libraries already, but sometimes only the gds is given, so you create these DFII libraries yourself if you want to. It sounds like they weren't included for you, so I would look for the std cell gds and try the -merge option of EDI's streamOut command as a starting point.

    - Kari

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