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Sagantex's Xtreme Targets Crosstalk Milpitas, Calif -- Four months after its acquisition of Haifa, Israel-based MicroCAD, a developer of crosstalk reduction physical design software technology, Sagantec released its first MicroCAD technology-based product, Xtreme. The software, developed by MicroCAD, but never sold outside Israel, targets crosstalk within designs of 0.35-micron and below. Xtreme, taking up where the router leaves off, globally spaces and widens interconnect. According to Mahendra Jain, VP of marketing, routers typically do their best to minimize the channel when laying out a chip's interconnect structure. Xtreme spaces out these tightly placed wires across the design with special emphasis on predefined signals. "We can always find space," he says, "so we can move things around without increasing the area." By increasing the space between wires, the software can reduce crosstalk in designs and improve yields. The company claims Xtreme reduces cross-coupling capacitance from 40 percent for 0.35-micron designs, and more than 50 percent for 0.25-micron and below. Sagantec also claims the software can improve speed based on "paying special attention to critical paths," which can be widened to ensure throughput. Xtreme is employed preferably before manual layout changes, checking and extraction. Sagantec says that the software is best used for every functional block once its routing is finished and then for the top-level routing. "Almost all designs at 0.25 and below would need this," says Mr. Jain. The advent of copper interconnect technology is no different. If anything, it will increase the importance of Sagantec's crosstalk reduction software, says Mr. Jain. With copper interconnects the gaps become smaller but the trenches become deeper. Electro-migration is reduced, says Mr. Jain, but if anything crosstalk actually worsens with copper. Xtreme handles hierarchy and any number of layers, while preserving connectivity and design rule correctness. It accepts shape and symbolic data, and supports net specifications. The software also supports several routing styles including sea-of-gates, channel-based or data path. Priced at $150,000 per seat, Xtreme is now shipping. The software is available or Sun Microsystems SparcStation running SunOS, Sun Ultra running Solaris and Hewlett-Packard's HP 9000/700 running UX operating systems. It also runs on IBM's RS6000 workstations with AIX.
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