1. 1 Request to form IEEE study group DASC meeting February 28, 2001 Prepared by Wolfgang Roethig wroethig@eda.org

2. 2 Presentation to DASC The following people created and reviewed this presentation during a kickoff meeting on February 20, 2001 Simon FavreMonterey Design Systems Greg DuFourMentor Graphics Jay AbrahamSilicon Metrics Pierre GirouardLogicVision Liz ChambersTera Systems Cynthia ParrishAristo Wolfgang RoethigNEC Tim EhrlerPhilips Alex ZamfirescuAlternative System Concepts, IEEE DASC member Nancy NettletonSUN Microsystems Joe DanielsAccellera Antonero CarvalhoLSI Logic Vinay SrinivasSequence Design Li Pen YuanAvant! Corporation Arun BalakrishnanNEC Steffen RochelSimplex

3. 3 Objective The objective of the Advanced Library Format (ALF) is to provide a modeling language and semantics for functional, physical and electrical performance description of technology-specific libraries for cell-based and block- based design.

4. 4 Scope ALF shall serve as the primary data specification of library elements for design applications, from RTL to tape-out, used to implement integrated circuits. The language shall model behavior, timing, power, signal integrity, physical abstraction and physical implementation rules of library elements.

5. 5 Target Application Support

6. 6 Motivation VDSM technology enables larger designs and requires knowledge of more physical and electrical details –more abstract models required –models must capture pertinent electrical and physical data –models must be efficient for design and analysis As design tools and flows become more complex, preparation of technology libraries becomes more expensive –Multiple library representations for increasing number of tools –Tool-specific libraries change versions frequently Advantages of a standard library model description –reduce the cost and increase the quality of the library –less time and resources required for creation and validation –facilitate tool interoperability –leverage 3rd party library sources –enable design tools to keep pace with evolving technology spec

7. 7 Motivation (cont.) Design tools do not work in isolation any more –logical design tools are aware of layout (“physical synthesis”) –layout tools are aware of electrical constraints (timing, power, crosstalk, voltage drop) –Performance optimization tools must respect reliability and manufacturability constraints (electromigration, antenna) –DFT tools not only for functional correctness, but also electrical correctness (delay faults, severe voltage drop) As a consequence, a comprehensive and coherent modeling approach is required

8. 8 Conclusion We propose to use the existing ALF 2.0 specification from Accellera as a baseline for a standard library model description Therefore, we request to be recognized as IEEE study group and to process a PAR, and we invite interested parties to participate