DAC 99—Avant! Launches Physical Verification Tool

Fremont, CA-based Avant! has released Hercules-II, a physical verification tool for very-deep submicron IC applications and design systems. Unveiled at this week's Design Automation Conference (DAC), Hercules-II incorporates a new engine that processes both hierarchical and flat designs, speeding the move from old to new tools easier for design engineers.

In today's design environment, all hierarchical verifications tools have to process both flat and hierarchical data to efficiently deal with modern complex ICs. Avant! has taken this requirement into account, and has increased the efficiency of its Hercules product.

Hercules is push-button compatible with Cadence's Dracula tool to smooth the transition for user migrating to Hercules-II. Additionally, the tool features enhanced LVS debug functionality as well as graphical-user interface (GUI)-based, wed-based, and text-based debugging capabilities.

Hercules-II is designed for verifying 0.15 and 0.18 µm designs featuring more than 1 billion transistors. It is equipped with complete support for advanced line end enclosure checks, charge accumulation antenna checks, and local interconnect enclosure checks. It can also be integrated with Avant!'s Taurus-OPC and lithography tools for a complete verification to mask solution.

The new physical verification tool is on display at this week's DAC show. It will be available for shipment in the third quarter of 1999 on Sun, Solaris, HP Unix, Alpha, and IBM AIX operating systems. Pricing will start at $90,000.