Synopsys Press Release: Synopsys Makes Key Contribution to the IPL Alliance

Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS), a world leader in software and IP for semiconductor design and manufacturing, today announced that it has contributed a draft standard for Interoperable Property and Parameter Definitions to the IPL (Interoperable PDK Libraries) Alliance. This contribution from Synopsys significantly advances PDK interoperability by establishing a standard for the critical link between the schematic and layout design data.

EETimes: Group’s ‘interoperable’ analog flow turns up heat on Cadence

Anaheim, Calif. — The once-sleepy analog EDA market is suddenly generating a lot of buzz, as a number of forces combine to advance the technology and threaten Cadence Design Systems Inc.’s stranglehold....

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World’s Largest Foundry Brings Expertise to IPL Alliance Efforts

Foundry Sponsor TSMC and Charter Sponsors Ciranova, Magma, Silicon Canvas and Synopsys to Present an Interoperable PDK Mechanism

TSMC invites IPL Alliance to participate in its “Partner & Services Pavilion” at the 2008 U.S. Technology Symposium

Five IPL Alliance members demonstrate that a single PCell library supports a complete custom IC flow including schematic, layout and DRC tools, enabling design database interoperability.

P-cells and OpenEngines: Ed Lechner, director of product marketing for analog/mixed-signal at Synopsys, provided an update of the IPL initiative, which aims to create and promote interoperable p-cells that work with any OpenAccess tools. Members include Ciranova, Jeda Technologies, Magma Design Automation, Silicon Canvas, Silicon Navigator, Synopsys, and Virage Logic. It's a "grass roots effort" not associated with any standards body, he said.

Working Groups for Properties and Parameters, PCells and Constraints seek to grow standards for interoperable analog and full custom design flows

Hi folks, just months after its founding, the Interoperable PCell Libraries (IPL) coalition is showing great progress, as this week at the Synopsys Interoperability developer’s forum the group demonstrated a multi-vendor analog/AMS tool flow running IPL’s newly released library on the Si2’s OpenAccess common database.

Morning Session One:
“Interoperability of Analog/Full-Custom Flows” features the latest IPL updates that address broad interoperability issues in analog and full-custom design flows and foundry process design kits (PDKs). Six IPL member companies will demonstrate products interoperating using the proof of concept IPL and OpenAccess Analog Symbol Library in real time. After the session, attendees are invited to join representatives from the IPL member companies for a continued technical discussion over lunch.

The IPL Initiative seeks to bring openness, and with it greater productivity, to the creation of PCells and process design kits for full-custom design.

At lunchtime on Wednesday, I attended a large meeting of IPL – stands for Interoperable PCell Libraries – an alliance of EDA companies who are collaborating to “create and promote” standards for open-source interoperable PCell libraries that support the OpenAccess database from Si2. The companies include AWR, Ciranova, Silicon Canvas, Silicon Navigator, Synopsys, Magma, and Virage Logic.

So far, they’ve produced “a high-quality proof-of-concept library using a generic 0.13 micron process [which] demonstrates that the IPL mechanism works.” Sigh.

This is a really big, complex, and contentious issue and you can bet you’ll be hearing lots more about in the coming months (and years). The take-away I gleaned from my visit to the luncheon? “You can have PCells with no SKIL required.” That’s a pun. If you don’t get it, go to the IPL website and see if you can figure it out.

Standards are breaking out all over in analogue design as companies try to challenge the dominant player.

Silicon Canvas announced plans to become the first Company to offer full rule-driven, schematic-driven, and constraint-driven layout flows running natively on Open Access.Recently, several independent committees have been announced that will explore the remaining issues necessary for Open Access to become a truly open standard for analog design. These include the Interoperable Pcell Library (IPL) initiative ( www.iplnow.com) which was formed to create, encourage and promote the use of an open, non-proprietary Pcell infrastructure.

Applied Wave Research, Inc. (AWR®) announced that its new 2007 release of Analog Office® design suite supports design layout export to an OpenAccess-based database using interoperable PCell libraries (IPL).

Several of Cadence’s competitors in the full custom digital and analog tool space are uniting to come up with an open pcell library (and subsequently open pcell language) that will seemingly compete but also interoperate with Cadence’s proprietary SKILL language based pcell libraries. However, the effort called IPL (Interoperable pcell library) is just getting under way and still has technical and perhaps more significant political challenges to overcome

Hey folks, this Thursday afternoon I’m moderating a panel at Synopsys’ Spring interoperability forum on the progress and directions of the newly established IPL (interoperable Pcell library) coalition.
I’ve written about the IPL effort and the general need for open interoperable pcells in several articles and blog posts. ...

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq:SNPS), a world leader in semiconductor design software, today announced that its 19th electronic design automation (EDA) Interoperability Developers' Forum will be held on Thursday, April 26th in Santa Clara, Calif. It will feature discussions about open analog standards, the Unified Power Format (UPF) and Liberty™ library advancements. The Forum provides an open environment for EDA tool developers, IC design engineers and IP providers to discuss the critical topic of interoperability. Anyone who wants to attend is welcome...

In an effort to level the playing field in the analog and custom-digital tools market and to reduce the amount of efforts it requires for foundries to develop PDKs (process design kits) for each new fab process, five EDA companies have announced at Si2's Open Access conference an alliance to collaborate on the creation and distribution of an interoperable and open PCell library, dubbed IPL ...

Taking another step towards interoperable parameterized cells (p-cells) that can be used with any OpenAccess-based IC layout tool, five EDA vendors have collaborated to develop an open-source, interoperable p-cell library (IPL) generated using technology from Ciranova Inc. ...