The Blast 2005.03 "Boot Camp" IC Design course using Magma technology is an in depth class which teaches students how to manage top level or block-level physical hierarchical designs and covers all phases of technology development and design analysis and optimization. This 10 day course is taught by experts in the various aspects of using Magma to build complex flat and hierarchical designs. The course is composed of approximately 50% lecture and 50% lab work. This is an advanced course. Completion of the 3-day Blast Fusion course is highly recommended. Familiarity with the tool is required. The following modules are taught during Boot camp:
Introduction and RTL Synthesis: This module introduces the fundamentals of all Magma tools, including a discussion of Gain methodology, an overview of the integrated Blast Fusion/Noise/Rail/Power flow, a section on Data Model and on Enwrap/Snap reporting, a description of the objects used in Magma's hierarchical design system: views/volcanoes/whiteboxes/greyboxes/glassboxes and blackboxes and an overview of how to use Magma's Graphical User Interface (GUI). RTL synthesis techniques using Blast Create are covered including rtl import, area optimization, DFT insertion, Static Timing Analysis and timing optimization. There are 6 labs over a 2 day period.
Top Level Flow: This module covers both top down and bottom up approaches to physical hierarchical designs using the floorplan editor and the partition manager. Features such as, top level prototyping, floor planning and power planning, cluster placement and hierarchy analysis techniques; methods of managing a hierarchical design flow including soft macro creation and commit, abstract creation and selection using views, timing budget creation and view swapping; floorplan optimzation including pin optimization, congestion management, timing budgeting; clock tree insertion including hold fixing and data skewing, and DRC/antenna/filler metal fixing across hierarchical boundaries will be addressed, as well as timing closure. There are 10 labs over a 2 day period covering all topics of top-level management.
Block Level Flow: This module covers basic block building using the Blast Fusion "fix" script internals. This is a complete RTL to gdsii flow and covers such aspects of block design as floor planning/power planning, clock tree insertion, place and route, additional optimization techniques. Also includes a full course in STA and OCV including multi-mode and multi-corner optimization and STA features. There are 3 labs for exercising the entire flow over a 1 day period.
Design Analysis and Closure: This module is designed to teach engineers how to use specific features of the Magma tool set to analyze and correct particular aspects of designs. The module covers rail and power analysis using Blast Rail, and silicon integrity issues like crosstalk glitch STA and fixing, delay noise STA and fixing and signal EM fixing using Blast Noise. This module also covers techniques for closing top-level designs using glassbox and whitebox data correctly. There are 10 labs for this section covering a 3 day period.
Library Qualification and Correlation: This module is designed to teach engineers how to prepare standard cell, macro and pad libraries. The module will cover: writing technology rules files using up to date Magma commands for 90/65nm technology rules, creating parasitic files as well as correlating parasitics to third party tools, building a standard cell library for performance using cell hiding and dominating techniques, preparing and abstracting large macro/pad libraries. There are 5 labs for this section over a 2 day period.