[Magic-dev] Re: A question on technology files

[Denis Dupeyron]

Svenn,

> I was told by somebody who has been in the business for some years that the
> current and the previous "node" are kind of business secret and do differ a
> bit between the foundries. [...] Signing NDA's may be nescessary in many cases.

That, and the fact that the design kit you get from the foundries is
more than just the tech files. There are pads, with their ESD
protections, digital and/or analog standard cells, and sometimes more.
And this has a lot of IP in it. I agree it's rarely rocket science,
but legally speaking it's IP, and it requires an NDA.

> I suspect that big players in the EDA software business like to have an
> advantage on other tool vendors and have some kind of agreement with the
> foundries about who get what for whatever purpose.

Right on. Foundries I worked for got indecent prices on EDA software.
Sometimes only paying a minimum maintenance fee, the license itself
being free. And that was not only for design kit development (which
would be understandable), but also for commercial chip development.
They also get more support and customization. I remember once calling
the-big-EDA-software-vendor-that-everybody-knows, telling them some
numerical model in their analog simulator wasn't really suiting my
needs, and they had changed it for me and made a release in less than
a week. In exchange of what, EDA software vendors get a dramatization
of that above secrecy thing, which gives them a competitive advantage.

> I also guess that it is a
> wish from the foundry side to have a reduced need to support a pletora of
> tools that deliver gds to them.

AFAIK, not really. The sign-off guys usually perform a DRC and
antenna-rule checks at best with their own tools, and that's it. If
you want more, LVS for example, you'd have to provide a schematic
database in the format of the one and only software they support. The
good news is that it's almost always the same, and the bad news is
that particular software is far from free in both sense of the word.
If it doesn't come out OK, or if they can't read it at all, they tell
you where the errors are, and that's up to you to fix them. Saving
millions of dollars on free (or almost) EDA software is, I believe,
the real reason for supporting only one vendor.

Denis.