| |
|
| |
New
Decompressor DLL Streams Compressed GDSII and MEBES
Data Directly into Design Tools |
| |
|
| |
Fully supported
by TSMC, UMC, Chartered, and SMIC for their
world-wide tape-out customers. |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
“We
standardized on gdzip & mezip for many years now
with UMC and our mask shop partners. With the
volume of data that we have, the cost savings and
operation efficiency gains are tremendous. We
are very happy with the products and Solution-Soft’s
first rate of technical support.”
Peter Peng,
Deputy Division Director, mask
Engineering & Service Division, UMC.
"We use gdzip, mezip, and tapeout
client everyday here at Xilinx. The
products have more than paid for by
themselves in just one year of
production usage!"
Dr. Wolfgang J. Leitermann
Sr. Manager of Tapeout
Operations, Xilinx
"We have successfully adopted gdzip
and are happy with it's
performance."
Eric
Minami
CAD Manager, Marvell Technology
Group
"Solution-Soft's compressor gdzip
has saved us a considerable amount
of storage space and backup time.
Since our partners also use the
compressors, we both benefit from
shorter, more reliable and more
secure ftp transfers."
Juergen
Geissler, Tapeout Engineer
Major European semiconductor
manufacturer
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
See detailed data from our customers: |
| |
GDSII
MEBES |
| |
Data Sheet: |
| |
Unix (Solaris, Linux, HP-UX & AIX) |
| |
Case Studies: |
| |
UMC
European chip maker
Xilinx |
Breakthrough Compression
Technology for the Semiconductor Industry - GDSII and
MEBES Formats
New Era in GDSII and MEBES
Compression
Solution-Soft's gdzip as percentage of normalized gzip
Recognizing the challenge to transfer, manipulate, and
store the exponentially-increasing size of IC design
files, Solution-Soft has developed gdzip™ and mezip™,
breakthrough compressors for the GDSII and MEBES formats
used by the semiconductor industry. The MEBES format is
the most commonly used format for electron beam
lithography and photomask production. The GDSII stream
is the standard exchange format between the design world
and the mask shops.
As designs become more complicated and the application of Optical Proximity Correction (OPC)
more aggressive,
the data volumes have exploded. It is now common to have
designs in the Gigabyte (GB) range for both GDSII and
MEBES files. In 2002, the maximum MEBES data volume for
a single layer was about 100 GB, and this was predicted to
increase to 150 GB and 200 GB in 2003 and 2004
respectively.
The large GDSII and MEBES file sizes create challenges
for file transfer, manipulation, and storage. With the
increasing popularity of the fabless trend and external
mask shops, GDSII and MEBES files are constantly
transferred electronically between design houses,
foundries, mask shops, and tool vendors. Prolonged, large
file transfers increase the tape out cycle time. These
large files also decrease the reliability of transfers,
because of transmission errors and line drops. These
failures further increase the tape out cycle time.
Breakthrough Solutions - The traditional approach
is to use generic compressors, such as gzip and Unix
compress, to make files smaller for transmission and storage.
However, generic compressors can no longer meet the needs of
the increasing file sizes in the semiconductor industry.
Working with industry leaders, Solution-Soft has developed
patent-pending breakthrough solutions, gdzip and mezip, that
compress files as much as 10 times more than generic
compression tools. These significantly increased compression
ratios make the tape out process faster and easier by
providing:
- Faster file transfers
- More reliable file transfers
- Reduced network bandwidth usage
- Significant online and off-line storage savings
- Faster and smaller backups, archives and restores
- Reduced management and infrastructure costs.
Ensured reliability - To ensure file integrity, our
compressors create a block-by-block checksum (during the
compression process) that can be used during decompression to
verify that the decompressed file is identical to the
original. This advanced block-level checksum provides
superior data integrity to gzip, which generates only one
file-level checksum.
Benefits - If a generic compressor reduces a 1
GB file by 50% to 500 MB, Solution-Soft's compressors
will typically compress that same file to between 250 MB
and as little as 50 MB. This means that files compressed
with our technology take less time to
transfer and less time to store than files
compressed with gzip, UNIX compress, or other common
compressors.
Faster File transfers - gdzip and mezip will
speed up file transfer by 2 to 10 fold. This can save
hours in transfer time for GDSII and MEBES files.
More Reliable File Transfers - Because the
files are much smaller using gdzip and mezip, the
chances of a transmission failure during the lengthy
transfer process are significantly reduced. Since these
failures are often not discovered until much later,
these failures can add days to the tape out cycle.
When integrated with Solution-Soft's
SafeVelocity file transfer product, completely
error-free transmission is virtually guaranteed.
Reduced network bandwidth usage - The
smaller file sizes achieved using gdzip and mezip
significantly reduce network bandwidth usage. These
savings extend the life of your existing infrastructure
and defer the need to upgrade to expensive larger
bandwidth lines.
Significant online and off-line storage savings
- With file sizes reduced by a factor of between 2 and
10, storage requirements are greatly reduced. These
savings apply equally to on-line disk storage as well as
off-line media archiving.
Faster and smaller backups, archives, and
restores - Similarly, the time needed for backups
and restores is reduced by a factor of 2 to 10.
Reduced management and infrastructure costs.
- Significant cost savings are achieved as a result of
personnel time saved monitoring file transfers, juggling
disk space, and managing network bandwidth and storage
resources. Infrastructure savings result from reduced
use of system resources, disk space, media archiving, and
bandwidth.
|
| Reduced Tape Out Cycle Time - Many file transfers
occur during each tape out cycle. By reducing the file
transfer time from 2 to 10 times during each transfer and
increasing the transfer reliability, the overall tape out
cycle time is reduced. A faster tape out cycle means faster
time to market.
NEW Decompressor DLL!
Solution-Soft's new DLL [Dynamic Link Library] module
allows transparent in-line decompression of GDSII and
MEBES files with any EDA tool. When combined with
our advanced GDSII or MEBES compressors the DLL will
allow applications such as Cadence's K2 QuickView or Mentor Graphics' Calibre to read a
compressed design file directly from the disk without
needing to manually decompress the file before opening.
Read more....
Customers Verify Results - Click below to see
actual tape out data provided by our customers comparing
file sizes after compression, using gdzip and mezip vs.
the same files compressed using gzip.
GDSII Comparison Data
MEBES Comparison Data
File Formats Supported- Solution-Soft offers
specialized compressors for the GDSII file format and
the MEBES file format-- both used extensively by the
semiconductor industry. Compressors for other formats
are in development. Please contact us if you would like
to inquire about a different file format.
Operating Systems Supported - Solaris, HP-UX,
AIX, True64, and Linux. If you need an operating system
currently not supported, please contact us.
Solution-Soft invites you to test-drive our
specialized compressors today. Contact our Sales
Department at 408-346-1424 or sales@solution-soft.com.
Companion product to improve the reliability of your
file transfer process - Eliminate time consuming
retransmissions, corrupted data, and partial transfers
using Solution-Soft's
SafeVelocity File Transfer Product. SafeVelocity is
specifically designed to provide the highly reliable
transfer of gigabyte-sized files while increasing
security. In addition to its numerous error checking and
auto-resume features, SafeVelocity is the only file
transfer product that knows the size of files to be
transferred in advance and automatically notifies users
of transfer failures.
|