Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) standardizes on Altium and unifies its design process
“We've used all the PCB design tools, but Altium has proved to be the best solution for our design teams. The unified software platform means that switchover and navigation between schematics and the PCB is convenient and fast. Features such as differential pairs, net length tuning and integrity analysis are extremely helpful and ensure that our boards meet their high-speed performance targets.”
Liu Qi,
International IC Manufacturing and Testing Service Department, SMIC
The need
Imagine building a car with a team, but each team member is developing his part in a separate room. In this scenario, the team doesn’t share any data and each member uses his own tool. So, when the time comes to put it all together, would you expect the car to work as intended?
This same might be said about piecemeal design and the issues of transferring files between several different design tools. It could also explain the issues faced by integrated circuit manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). The electronics designers at SMIC were using a variety of electronic development systems, with up to five different design tools in use at one time. This was affecting design flows, and designers were often suffering from document formatting problems, and design legacy and translation issues.
The challenge
SMIC develop integrated circuits for today’s increasingly small and complex electronics. Making sure that these devices perform alongside the latest technologies, SMIC develop equipment to test that the chips meet their target performance specifications. One of the challenges for SMIC is that its testing equipment must be highly customized and perform extremely fast automated tests on a variety of increasingly complex devices. And with Moore’s Law predicting that circuits will double in capacity every two years, SMIC could not afford the bottlenecks that were stemming from its current design processes.
The solution
By standardizing on Altium’s solution, SMIC had a unified design environment in which all electronics designers can collaborate on. Altium brings together the various phases of electronics design into one application and removes the need to transfer large blocks of design data across different applications. Instead, electronics designers can complete entire designs within Altium’s solution and eliminate the documentation and format issues that often inhibit effective design management.
Altium also offers a range of features aimed to facilitate high speed design. Electronics designers can take advantage of high speed capabilities such as signal integrity analysis, interactive impedance control routing, design rule checking (DRC), differential pair length tuning, and paired length tuning and matching. Using this suite of features, SMIC can better capitalize on printed circuit board real-estate and easily identify integrity issues throughout the design.
The results
The design flow efficiencies afforded by Altium’s unified environment means that designs are completed quicker and with better results. Engineers can collaborate more effectively and share data more freely. For example, SMIC has reduced its design cycle times by 10 per cent, while design revisions and upgrades are completed 25 per cent faster. And SMIC has shaved 25 per cent off the time taken to update testing equipment.
Product information
SMIC’s design team uses testing equipment to ensure the quality and performance of its IC technology. The equipment includes an eight-layer, high-density, high-speed board capable of clocking 1 GHz and above. Its test applications include automotive electronics, radio frequency circuits, audio and video processors and computer applications.
Customer information
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation is China’s largest developer of semiconductor technologies. SMIC is headquartered in Shanghai, China and has offices located in the US, Europe, Hong Kong and Japan.
For more information, please visit www.smics.com
