Automation versus Hand Drawing

Quality has long been the advantage of hand-drawn layout. Layout automation tools and migration tools tended to provide results faster, but that were not as good as high-quality sources of hand-drawn layout.

At the latest technology nodes, however, automation has not just caught up, it has passed hand drawn.

Here's one example: Prolific's ProGenesis was used to optimize a production library that had previously been created and optimized manually. While improving the performance of the cells, ProGenesis was able to meet or improve the area of every cell, and was able to reduce the area of the cells:

ProGenesis Improves Hand Drawn Cells 58% of the cells were made 1 or 2 grids smaller, many eliminated metal-2
20% of the cells were made 2 grids smaller, many eliminated metal-2
12% of the cells were the same size, but metal-2 was eliminated
14% of the cells were the same size, but reduced metal-2 usage
16% of the cells were only equal in quality to the hand-drawn

So layout automation is still faster, and now it produces better quality results. Significantly less manpower is required to create or respin a library using automated tools, and the software can produce more consistent results. The manpower advantage is also helpful when it comes to scaling up for a large project or series of projects, and scaling down during periods of inactivity.

Perhaps best of all is that the software continues to improve, and the combined experiences of multiple users are preserved and shared through the updated features, improved ease of use, and better understanding of the "right" answers for any given overconstrained problem.

ProGenesis Users Say:

"We found through a competitive evaluation that ProGenesis was the right tool to help us satisfy our design requirements and quickly produce the best possible libraries."