Setting Up for Substrate Coupling Analysis

SCA (Substrate Coupling Analysis) was end-of-lifed many years ago. The last update to it was in 2002 I believe (from the Product Notes in the IC5141 installation). In IC5141 it was end-of-lifed but still present as part of the end of life process. It's no longer there in IC61.

Instead you should investigate the Substrate extraction/analysis capabilities of QRC, which is the current Cadence product for analyzing substrate issues (and this is considerably more advanced than SCA was).

Kind Regards,

Andrew.

Dear Andrew,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

Well, QRC I have no idea. Could you please reply to the following queries.

1:- I use Calibre ( Mentor Graphics) for PEX, LVS after doing LAYOUT in virtuso. Of course I can move to Assura ( or something like that) if at all needed.

     I use IC5141.

     For QRC what are the things needed ?

     Any suggestions for using it with Calibre or Cadence Assura ?

2:- Any documents for setting up QRC ?

3:- What is FIRE and ICE.

Kind Regards,

1. QRC is Cadence's parasitic extraction suite - it can handle both cell-level extraction (formerly known as Fire and Ice) which uses a DEF description of the layout (for example) or full polygon extraction (formerly known as Assura RCX). The cell-level extractor is for place and routed designs and doesn't require an LVS step; the polygon extractor requires an LVS tool in conjunction with the extractor - this can be Assura, PVS or Calibre. QRC can extract both conventional parasitics (RLCK) and also the substrate mesh.
2. The software comes in the "PVE" stream available on downloads.cadence.com - the latest release being PVE121. The documentation is accessible via cdnshelp in this stream - or via the files in <PVE121instDir>/doc. You can also access the QRC documentation (e.g. the QRC Extraction Users Manual) via Cadence Online Support. You can also contact customer support in the same place if you need further assistance.
3. See 1.

Regards,

Andrew.

Dear Andrew,

Thanks a lot for your reply.

For QRC ( to appear in Virtuso), we need PVE or EXT ?

Kind regards

I am confused between PVE and EXT.

Could you please explain this  ?

After installing >EXT I am able to find QRC menu in Virtuso Layout editor.

But I am not able to find Substrate Analysis menu.

But in Assura , I am able to see  Substrate Analysis menu. But due to some reason, while clicking on this menu I am seeing some errors. I have filed a SR.

However, for Substrate analysis using QRC, is ASSURA only needed ?

I use calibre. I think all RC extraction process techfiles needed by Calibre can be fed to QRC by some mechanism. But for Substrate analysis is there any simple way existing ?

Could please give your comment on these ?

Kind Regards,

The EXT streams are obsolete now. In the past there were separate streams for QRC (EXT), QuickView (KQV) and PVS (PVS), but these have been combined into a newer stream, the PVE stream. So the PVE versions are all newer than the EXT stream.

If doing Substrate Analysis, you should be able to do that with QRC (from the EXT or PVE stream, but ideally from the PVE stream). First you have to do the extraction. On the QRC form, you'd have to enable "Substrate Extract" from the Setup tab, and then this will open up the Substrate tab. Having done the extraction, you can open the Extracted form, and do QRC->QRC SND Analysis (which is the equivalent of the old Assura->Substrate AC Analysis).

Andrew. 

Dear Andrew,

Thanks a lot.

Kind Regards