Detailed and precise hierarchical design planning is essential to achieving closure on large designs. In this article we describe a new hierarchical design flow and its usage on a 3 million-gate chip.

As we all know, the back-end design of layout implementation known as integrated circuit (IC) layout — is simplistically divided into ASIC-style flow and full-custom flow. This article will try to ...

Editor's Note: This is first article in a series that will look at the importance of understanding the components of building construction and design. This column is designed to assist firefighters ...