"Spyglass provides a rich interface for developing custom rules," Friedberg said. Agere has created over 50 audits that it uses to ensure design quality, many of which are unique to Agere and reflect their unique knowledge of ASIC design methodology. The ability to quickly create advance rules also lets Agere be more responsive to customer requests.

For example, Agere had developed a technology-specific audit for electromigration, based on a global clock frequency. When a customer asked Agere to look at each net based on its actual clock, Spyglass let them easily create a new rule to handle it.

"Spyglass gives us the hooks to go in and identify each net and its controlling clock," Friedberg said. "I don't know of any other solution with that capability."

Breadth of audits in one tool
Of the 50 audits, Agere has developed about 25 technology-specific checks for design rule violations such as overloaded drivers, undesired clock interactions, improper interface between cells of different voltages, and IP-specific errors. These audits let Agere customers use all the power of Agere's technology and ensure the designs are correct before handoff.

"For example, we have a very rich set of complex I/O buffers - our documentation tells designers how things should be connected, and Spyglass lets them verify that they've done it correctly," Friedberg said.

Spyglass also performs topology audits to identify areas which, although correct in function, may lead to lower circuit performance due to poor implementation.

"Topology audits give designers insights into the structure of the design. Some topology you can"t say is good or bad - it may be acceptable in some cases but not in others. Spyglass lets our designers break it down into constructs and decide if it's OK based on their knowledge of design intent."

"Using Spyglass for both technology-specific and topology audits is far more effective than switching among multiple tools to identify different types of problems one at a time. Altogether Spyglass handles more than 50 Agere audits."

"Different tools out here let you do pieces of this, but Spyglass is the only tool that lets you do the full breadth," Friedberg said.

Atrenta's token-based business model benefits Agere and its customers
Atrenta's token-based business model is one example of Atrenta's flexibility. Agere ships its libraries, tools, and technology-specific Spyglass rule set to its customers, who then use a token to download Spyglass directly from Atrenta's web site. This gives Agere customers easy access to Spyglass for handoff audits, and frees Agere to focus on what it does best.

"We"re an ASIC vendor," said Friedberg. "We dont have to manage the Spyglass distribution process or worry about licenses and updates. We QA our rules with all new versions of Spyglass , and our customers always have the latest technology from Atrenta."

Friedberg has been pleased with Atrenta's flexible, responsive approach to doing business. "We always had what we needed from Atrenta," he said. "If we needed something more, they were always very quick to respond."

Robust and extensible solution Spyglass also gives Agere the ability to standardize on one tool for both RTL and gate level analysis. Many Agere customers already use Spyglass at the RTL level."We can definitely see the value of Spyglass as a complete solution from RTL to gate level," Friedberg said.