Shift left solutions for IC design stage verification

The primary goal of Calibre Shift Left solutions is to detect and address targeted design issues as early as possible in the development cycle. By focusing only on critical and systemic errors in early design stages, shift left verification and optimization improves engineer productivity while enhancing design quality, reliability, and manufacturability and accelerating time to market schedules.

Design companies face a constant need to bring more advanced designs to market faster, achieving the ramp to volume production sooner even while using increasingly complex implementation, analysis, and verification flows to ensure design performance, reliability, and manufacturability. Producing “clean” designs as quickly as possible is essential to market success, but waiting until signoff verification to find out how well you did is probably the least efficient approach. In addition, finding and fixing errors at the end of the design flow can be the hardest and most-time-consuming stage because of the difficulty of fixing errors in tight layouts with increasingly restrictive design rules.

Why not find and fix those errors earlier? Calibre Shift Left design stage verification provides targeted rule selection to identify critical and systemic design issues during design and implementation stages. This reduced ruleset enables engineers to focus only on relevant errors, ignoring transitory errors that will disappear as design components are placed and connected later on. Intelligent debug signals enable designers to identify root cause and determine the optimal corrective action faster and more efficiently. Automated, Calibre-correct layout enhancements and repairs that are back-annotated to the implementation tool design databases enable design companies to avoid tying up expensive P&R licenses to perform design optimizations. And, because Calibre Shift Left solutions use the same qualified Calibre rule decks and verification engines used by Calibre signoff verification tools, they provide the same advanced physical verification coverage and capabilities.

Calibre Shift Left solutions have a positive impact on design cycle time by identifying and resolving specific design issues earlier in the design flow. Focused verification and optimization runs are fast and efficient, even for large and complex designs. Eliminating these errors when they are easier and faster to fix also reduces the need for difficult and time-consuming signoff iterations later on. This significant reduction in signoff verification iterations reduces overall time to tapeout while ensuring design performance and manufacturability, enabling faster time to market.

Yes, both small and large design teams can benefit from shift left verification strategies. While implementation and execution strategies and processes will vary, companies and teams of all sizes can use Calibre Shift Left design stage verification to reduce the need for extensive rework at signoff, saving valuable time and resources.

Calibre Shift Left solutions provide a versatile design verification and optimization methodology that is applicable to all design styles and process technology nodes, although it is particularly beneficial for complex and mission-critical designs at advanced nodes. Calibre Shift Left solutions can also be tailored to fit your specific design goals and constraints.

Successful shift left implementation relies on a toolsuite that encompasses proven signoff-quality verification functionality, collaboration and communication tools, and training and skill development to harness the methodology's full potential. Calibre Shift Left solutions use trusted, industry-leading Calibre rule decks and engines to deliver the same high-quality results and performance available from the Calibre signoff verification toolsuite. Tight integration between Calibre tools and all major design and P&R tools provide design companies with the flexibility to create a mix of best-in-class tools and processes while benefitting from the comprehensive verification and optimization functionality that enables them to achieve Calibre-quality results in design stage verification.