WILSONVILLE, Ore., February 11, 2011—Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that MediaTek, Inc., a leading fabless semiconductor company for wireless communications and digital multimedia solutions, has adopted the Calibre® PERC product as its solution for electrical rule checking (ERC) to help ensure comprehensive electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection and increase overall product reliability. The Calibre PERC solution increases the level of automation and accuracy of circuit verification, and reduces the number of false errors compared to MediaTek’s prior approach.
MediaTek is seeing significant benefits from Mentor’s advanced ERC technology and support. Because Calibre PERC is purpose-built for electrical rule checking, it handles MediaTek’s specific ERC challenges more comprehensively and accurately with less manual intervention. It also provides MediaTek with more data to diagnose the root cause of ESD failures and other reliability issues.
In addition to checking the existence and proper connectivity of ESD protection devices, MediaTek is also using the Calibre PERC product to measure and verify parasitic resistance between power clamping cells and power/ground bumps along potential ESD paths. They also use the tool to verify correct placement of on-chip ESD components within multiple voltage domains, and maximum geometrical distance between ESD diodes and receiver gate NMOS/PMOS devices.
“Calibre PERC continues to demonstrate its flexibility in delivering a range of circuit verification applications that customers have previously had to address with ‘one-off’ tools, scripts and other partial solutions,” said Joseph Sawicki, vice president and general manager of Mentor’s Design-to-Silicon division. “Calibre PERC provides a comprehensive, high capacity, production proven circuit reliability solution that is fully interoperable with the ubiquitous Calibre nm platform.”
About Calibre PERC
The Calibre PERC product addresses a range of applications including validating that a circuit has sufficient protection against electrostatic discharge (ESD) events, and helping designers identify inappropriate connections between multiple power supplies in mixed-signal ICs. The Calibre PERC solution goes beyond traditional layout geometry-based checking to enable verification of specific device and interconnect structures and electrical characteristics. For example, it can identify the omission of required ESD protection on a schematic or netlist. It can also be used to look for errant signal paths and other soft connection errors such as well connection errors, floating devices, nets, or pins, incorrect voltage supply connections, excessive series pass gates, problem level shifter designs, antenna checks, floating wells, minimum “hot” NWELL width, and many others.
About Mentor Graphics
Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world’s most successful electronic, semiconductor and systems companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of about $850 million. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777. World Wide Web site: http://www.mentor.com/.
