Chapter 24

Performing Cell Characterization

Most ASIC vendors use Star-Hspice to characterize their standard cell libraries and prepare data sheets by using the basic capabilities of the .MEASURE statement. Input sweep parameters and the resulting measure output parameters are stored in the measure output data files design.mt0 , design.sw0 , and design.ac0 . Multiple sweep data is stored in this file, and you can plot it by using AvanWaves. This lends itself to generating fanout plots of delay versus load. The slope and intercept of the loading curves can be used to calibrate VHDL, Verilog, Lsim, TimeMill, and Synopsys models.

This chapter covers:

• Determining Typical Data Sheet Parameters
  A series of typical data sheet examples show the flexibility of the MEASURE statement.
• Cell Characterization Using Data Driven Analysis
  Automates cell characterization, including timing simulator polynomial delay coefficient calculation. There is no limit on the number of parameters simultaneously varied or the number of analyses to be performed. Convenient ASCII file format for automated parameter input to Star-Hspice.