Luncheon Panel Discussion

Wednesday March 28 2007

12:00 noon-1:30pm

Do Digital Design and Variability Mix Like Oil and Water?

Moderator

Jacques Benkoski

Venture Executive, USVP

Organizer

Michelle Clancy

Cayenne Communications

Description

Ever since process technology moved below 90nm, variability in manufacturing has been increasingly significant in the digital design flow; moving from a secondary issue to a primary design flow consideration. Initially addressed by performing verification under a couple process corners and later expanding to many corners and OCV, variability is adding excessive complexity to the digital design flow with uncertain benefit. For years analog designers have designed components considering the effects of variation, but this methodology has not been adapted to digital design. This panel seeks to address the question of whether or not variation can be dealt with in the digital design flow or whether the mind sets of digital design and design for variability are incompatible?

Panelists

Shankar Krishnamoorthy - CTO and VP Engineering, Sierra Design Automation

David Holt - CEO, Lightspeed Logic, Inc

Ravi Subramanian - CEO, Berkeley Design Automation

Clive Bittlestone - TI Fellow, ASIC Back plane technology center, Texas Instruments

Tsuyoshi Yamamoto - Senior Manager SOC Development Group, Fujitsu Microelectronics America

Andrew Kahng, Chairman & CTO of Blaze DFM