imec partners with eda firm on exploration flows for 3d ICs
Belgian research company imec has teamed up with Californian eda firm Atrenta to develop an advanced planning and partitioning design flow for heterogeneous 3d stacked ICs.
The flow under development utilises imec's thermal and mechanical stress models and Atrenta's SpyGlass Physical 3d prototyping tool. This allow designers to access different scenarios quickly and choose the best option in advance of a full design implementation.
According to imec, the flow minimises the number of design iterations and facilitates a cost and time effective search of the solution space. Target applications include products for mobile, imagers, stacked dram and solid state drives.
