Computer requirements for ASIC design

[siskin]

I was wondering what kind of computers/workstations/servers are required these days for designing the latest digital ASICs?

I don't do many ASICs, but the last one I did was a 65nm job with a die area of about 40mm². To do the gate level sims on that I used a 24-core Xeon blade and it needed 96 GB RAM, and weeks of running time.

What on earth do people use to design the latest 28nm ASICs with die areas in the 100's of mm²?

Siskin

 

[yadavvlsi]

Machine with 24 processors is good enough to handle large designs. Memory is also good but there is a scope improvement in it. There are lot factor that affect run time.
The run time you mentioned is for a step/stage or full flow.?
You are doing front end or backend?
What is your instant count?
The way you implement your design i.e hierarchical or flat?
What is your target frequency?
Which tool you are using?
and so on...

 

[siskin]

Machine with 24 processors is good enough to handle large designs. Memory is also good but there is a scope improvement in it. There are lot factor that affect run time.
The run time you mentioned is for a step/stage or full flow.?
You are doing front end or backend?
What is your instant count?
The way you implement your design i.e hierarchical or flat?
What is your target frequency?
Which tool you are using?
and so on...

Hi yadavvlsi,

I mainly do front-end, up to and including synthesis, then pass to someone else to do the layout. I then do post-layout gate level simulations.
My last chip was ~1 million instances, plus a lot of RAM.
I use ModelSim for simulations. Of course, ModelSim is single-threaded, so it only uses 1 processor. That's why things take so long to run.
My next chip will be much bigger, so I'm worried about how much RAM I will need, and whether gate-level simulations will actually be feasible.

Siskin