If ever there was a need for additional help in design, now is the time. As the industry marches down, node after node, the problems ramp up, node after node.

After my conversation with Mentor’s Joe Sawicki several weeks ago about all of the pros/cons of moving to the next node, it was good then to speak with Sage-DA CEO Coby Zelnik about how his company’s tools are designed to help solve the single most ferocious problem that arises once designers in the trenches are ordered to make that move – the explosion in number and complexity of design rules.

Given that you all know how design rules work, can you quote chapter and verse about how the numbers of rule operations increase in the DRC Manual with each progressive node? Zelnik included a slide in his presentation last week that laid out the nightmare. At 65 nanometers, it’s 3000 rules; at 40 nanometers, it’s 4000 rules; At 28, it’s 8000. But at 20 and 16, the number stands at a staggering 16,000. The sheer magnitude of those numbers is what made the conversation last week with Zelnik so interesting.

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