Physical Verification Consulting

Each generation of silicon technology drives market opportunity to new heights. Yet, the accompanying exponential growth in silicon complexity places a huge burden on a company's physical verification and extraction (PVEx) capabilities and computational resources. How a company responds to these challenges largely determines the impact they can have on their SoC product's quality, performance, yields, and development schedules.

The simplest, most expedient, and cost-effective way to avoid manufacturing problems associated with next-generation silicon technology is to migrate PVEx decks and update PVEx software to meet each advance in technology. But doing this for even a single generation of silicon technology is a significant undertaking. Yet when companies are faced with choosing where to invest resources, most would prefer to apply them to activities that enhance and differentiate their product and maximize utilization of technical staff instead of updating the PVEx environment to keep pace with technological change. For these companies, the best alternative is to outsource the creation, translation, validation and/or optimization of rule decks.

Fortunately, Mentor Graphics is in a unique position, offering both the industry’s best PVEx tools in its Calibre product family along with Mentor Consulting’s best-in-class physical verification services designed specifically for Calibre users.