Design Conversion Tool Sergey Yevstigneev, Boris Ryakhovsky ...

critical for existing projects and design migration will be required to repair itsalignment to modern technology specifics.To decrease appeared impact from updated technology library automatedconversion procedures are developed and delivered for designers. Theseprocedures are intended to resolve local technology dependent inconsistenciesand could not be assembled into common automated tool to cover differentproblems for different technologies. Thus multiple migration utilities withunique interfaces, options and report style are usually delivered separately or aspart of emerged TDK to check and repair the design. Existing diversity betweenpresented utilities requires additional time for designers to understand supportedusage techniques. Designer’s learning should be repeated anytime with newmigration procedure. Quality of created self-consistent migration procedure withown GUI, design hierarchy scanning, log information keeping, etc. is anotherproblem because it should be developed and qualified by designer or externalteam anytime as well. Usually the procedure quality is a compromise withrequired time resources to avoid any impact on the design tape out.Freescale has a centralized library group that develops and maintains near 20technologies actively. To resolve the problem with design alignment to emergedTDK automated Design Conversion Tool (Design Converter) was developed bythis team. The tool was coded by SKILL Cadence language and presents forusers common GUI and issue report form as well as log information conductingwith error handling. Cadence library database passing was also built-in the toolcore. Comfortable database checking and repairing are achieved for designer bymentioned common technology independent features. All technology dependentspecifics are supposed to be done by help of external plug-ins which could beinvolved both from TDK and user side. Development process of suchprocedures could be dramatically simplified because they should contain onlydatabase object processing without redundant cosmetic features like GUI andreport. Quality level of result design migration utility is greatly improved due tocompletely qualified complex technology independent Design Converter coreand simplified technology dependent plug-in set. Developed conversionmethodology demonstrates high reliability on different Freescale technologiesand multiple designs. Defined plug-in registration and executing rules providepossibility to resolve wide variety of design inconsistencies like instance vs.base CDF mismatches, inherited connection issues , layout crash from pcellfootprint changes , etc.Tool methodologyDesign Converter provides an interface to check and, if necessary, convertCadence database objects. Currently supported object types are library, cell, cellview and instance. The structure of the tool is separated on two main parts,technology-independent core and technology-dependent plug-in set. The toolcore is targeted to apply technology dependent plug-ins to the Cadence databaseobjects selected by user. Plug-ins are intended for checking and, if necessary,fixing objects issues.To avoid unexpected design changes Design Conversion tool work process isseparated on two stages. The first is a scanning process (Scan) to find all designproblem issues. At this stage design library is used in read mode to avoid anydatabase changes. The second is a fixing process (Action) to correct all issueswhich were found by scanning procedure and approved by user. Issue approvalprocedure gives user good control for design update. This is a GUI drivenprocess which presents all issues found during Scan stage for review andrequires to sign off what should be fixed at the Action stage.