Si2 OpenAccess Live Forum

Join your colleagues for these timely technical presentations,
exclusively for Si2 OpenAccess Coalition Members

Welcome and Introductions

 Standardizing Multi-Patterning of   OpenAccess Design Objects

Ben Hoefer
Senior Design Automation Engineer
Intel

OpenAccess currently has no standardized API for the storage and retrieval of multi-patterning information on design objects. This presentation will highlight the goals and progress of a new Si2 Extension oaxColor, which is building a standardized reference implementation on top of OpenAccess to store and retrieve multi-pattern “color” information using API functions in C++, Python, Ruby, and Tcl.

What You Will Learn
- Overview of history and motivation for oaxColor extension
- Potential usage models
- Update on working group progress and plans

About the Presenter
Ben Hoefer is a senior design automation engineer on the Intel PDK team. His primary focus is layout design rule optimization and modeling, enabling more robust integration between design rules and EDA tools.

How a Domain-Specific Language Will Expand the OpenAccess Infrastructure

 Larg Weiland
 Fellow
 PDF Solutions

OpenAccess is a powerful C++ API that automates common IC design tasks. Using it efficiently requires a computer science background. The OAScript API, on the other hand, opens the usage to a broader audience, although knowledge of scripting languages like Python, Ruby Tck/Tk, or Perl is still necessary. Many designs use less than 100 of the 2000 classes available. More complex classes require a deep dive into the C++ documentation of OA. The OA Coalition Domain Specific Work Group is defining the direction of a domain-specific language as an OAScript extension. This will simplify OA so that users with no computer science background can efficiently use it. This presentation will discuss various use cases for implementing DSL.

About the Presenter
Larg Weiland has worked for more than 25 years in design automation. As a fellow at PDF Solutions, he in charge of the in-house EDA software development. Larg has presented at more than 35 conferences, has numerous magazine and book publications, and earned more than 90 patents.

 What Can OpenAccess
 Do for Photonics?

Martin Fiers
Co-Founder and Product Manager
Luceda Photonics

Luceda Photonics makes design software for the integrated photonics market covering the entire cycle, from component and circuit design to layout, implementation, and verification. Since the company's early days, management realized that interoperability with other EDA tools was crucial, and OpenAccess has enabled this feature. 

What You Will Learn
- How OpenAccess is used to exchange photonics design data
- Highlights of Luceda workflows using the IPKISS Link for Siemens EDA
- oaScript challenges and solutions from our practical experience

About the Presenter
Martin Fiers received his Ph.D. in Integrated Photonics at Ghent University, Belgium, in 2013. His doctorate research focused on a novel type of photonic hardware architectures for all-optical computing, inspired by machine learning. He also developed Caphe, the integrated photonics circuit simulator. Martin co-founded Luceda Photonics in 2014, and has been working with the company since then as product manager. He is also a Certified Scrum Product Owner.

 Using OpenMP: How Multi-Core   Processors Enable Multi-Threading
 for EDA Applications

Ed Gernert
Co-Founder and
Vice President of Engineering
Frontier Design Automation

With the abundance of dual-core and quad-core processors available today, EDA developers can take advantage of using simultaneous threads to improve overall performance. OpenMP is an application programming interface (API) tool that supports a shared memory model. OpenMP is a set of compiler directives to automatically spawn available threads to parallelize independent high compute tasks. 

What You Will Learn
- Overview of OpenMP threading techniques and methods
- Lessons learned and pitfalls to achieve multiple threads within a single process
- Review of shape-based autorouting performance using OpenMP with multiple threads

About the Presenter
Ed Gernert is co-founder and vice president of engineering at Frontier Design Automation, an EDA startup launched in 2019 with his long-time associate, John Cooper. Both Ed and John worked at Cooper and Chyan Technology where the autorouting products they developed 25 years ago for PCB and IC are still used today. Both founded EDA startup TeraRoute in 2006, where their work became the basis for both the Magma Gemini AutoRouter and the Synopsys Custom Compiler AutoRouter.

 SPEED API: TITAN Satellite 
 Group Update 

Vic Kulkarni
Chief Strategy Officer
Si2

Semiconductor design and EDA flows demonstrate an unmet need for managing high volumes of processed data compelled by the broad emergence of several disruptive technologies, i.e., Big Data AI/ML and Cloud. A critical missing piece in modern design flows is a standard format for, and means of, managing and sharing large amounts of Secure Processed Data (SPEED API) provided by silicon-to-system flows or databases. Vic will share the status and the twelve-month plan of this TITAN Satellite.

What You Will Learn
- What's new with TITAN
- Progress of the SPEED API Satellite
- Plans for the next twelve months

About the Presenter
Before joining Si2 last year, Vic steered the business, technology, go-to-market and product strategy of the Ansys Semiconductor Business Unit. His areas of responsibility included chip-package-system design software solutions, multi-domain simulation technology, AI/ML, and strategic acquisitions. Prior to Ansys, Vic co-founded and was president and CEO of Sequence Design, an EDA solutions provider for power and energy-efficient chip designs. Vic has a B. Tech from IIT Bombay, and an MSEE in Solid State Electronics from University of Cincinnati. In 2007, he received the UC "Distinguished Alumnus” Award."