Dr. Reese of MSU has a proven record of assimilating, modifying, and upgrading into a common design environment various CAD tools and libraries from ITD, MSU, UC Berkeley, UCLA, GE, View Logic, and other commercial vendors. After creating demonstration designs and tutorials, Reese has distributed the CAD tools to the ARPA/FBI/NSF community. The tool support has been in the following forms:
Other universities outside of the traditional DARPA research community have benefited from this work. In July 1993, an NSF faculty enhancement workshop was held at MSU; forty-five U.S. faculty members from across the nation were in attendance. This workshop used the same tools and training materials that have been used in the FBI workshops. Due to the past success and required experience of Dr. Reese in disseminating the technology and CAD tools, it is planned that he should continue this role relative to the research and deliverables associated with this proposal.
Hindrances to the use of certain standard cell libraries in the past have been (1) the particular CAD tool dependency, (2) the incompatibility between libraries (e.g., incompatible design rules), and (3) the fixed nature of the library with comprised utility for particular applications. First, making available compatible libraries with compatibility to the most popular CAD tools will significantly enhance usage in the community. The addition of datapath cells and the utilization of the third layer of metal for more layout density will further increase usage. Next, providing the utilities and design methodology to optimize for constraints, e.g., performance, power, voltage, and costs, will provide capability to the community presently available only through handcrafted design techniques. These tools and libraries should enhance the research communities' pursuit of architectures or microsystems which require such design constraints since significantly lower design effort will be required in the physical design.