Specification Platform for Library IP Development

A design platform (DP) is a total solution to build a System-On-Chip (SOC). DP consists of a set of libraries/IPs, CAD tools and design kits in conformity with the supported design flows and methodologies. The DP specifications provide a wide range of information from technology parameters like Process-Voltage-Temperature (PVT) corners to CAD tools’ information for library/IP development. However, the library/IP developers have difficulties in obtaining the desired data from the existing specifications due to their informality and complexity. In this thesis, we propose methodologies, flows and tools to formalize the DP specifications for their unification and to deal with it. The proposed description is targeting to be used as a reference to generate and validate libraries (standard cells, I/O, memory) as well as complex IPs (PLL, Serdes, etc.). First, we build a suitable data model to represent all required information for library/IP development and then propose a specification language named Library Development Specification based on XML (LDSpecX). Furthermore, we introduce a reference-based method to create a reliable specification in LDSpecX and task-based keywords to efficiently extract data from it. On the basis of the proposed solutions, we develop a specification platform. Experimentally, we develop a standard cell library from the specification creation to library validation by using the specification platform. We show that our approach enables to create a complete and consistent specification with a considerable reduction in time. It also bridges the gap between the specification and current automatic system for rapid library/IP development.