The Value Of Field Solvers In Semiconductor Development Helps Drive Infineon Innovation

Parasitic extraction (PEX) helps ensure accurate circuit performance in the design and verification flow. Development of accurate PEX runsets depends on accurate and precise extraction results obtained using a full-featured field solver. Infineon selected the Calibre xACT 3D tool as their reference field solver tool of choice in the development of their next-generation semiconductor power products for its accuracy, reliability, and ease of use.

Unintended (parasitic) resistance, capacitance and inductance can degrade operating frequency and speed and reduce bandwidth, resolution, matching, linearity, and signal integrity while increasing noise, offset, and voltage (IR) drop. Parasitics are also the root cause of electromigration (EM), electrostatic discharge (ESD), and timing violations. Parasitic extraction (PEX) detects and measures the effect of parasitics on circuit performance, enabling designers to adjust their design layouts to minimize or eliminate these impacts. PEX runsets guide the execution of PEX during design verification. To ensure these runsets are accurate, foundries use a reference field solver to perform the extraction, then confirm its results against actual silicon. This data is then used in the development of PEX runsets.

The Infineon team evaluated multiple field solvers against their criteria, including simplicity of the PEX validation process, ability to validate multiple geometry structures, correlation of the field solver calculations with real silicon, license costs, and easy handling of validation software. As a result of their thorough search for and evaluation of reference field solvers, Infineon selected the Calibre xACT 3D tool from Siemens Digital Industries Software as their reference field solver tool for PEX runset developers and design engineers. The collaborative effort between Siemens and Infineon allowed Infineon to not only improve their product quality, but also contribute valuable insights for future tool development and enhancement.

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