Summary of Overview of EDA Tools and Design Concepts.

Summary

There are three major classes of IC EDA design and tools: electronic system-level, front-end and back-end. ESL design includes requirements definition, modeling, and design exploration. FE tools include design capture, verification, and synthesis. BE tools include place and rout, as well as electrical, logical, and physical design rule checks.

IC designs are described from several different viewpoints, including behavior or functional, performance, and physical views. Each view consists of different kinds of information or data. Each view may contain several levels of hierarchy. Each level of hierarchy hides details of the levels below it.

Chip designing is the process of planning an IC and refining the plan. The resultant design is verified and redesigned until it meets the design goals.

Design methodology is the sequence of design steps followed for a particular IC type. A design flow is the series of actual tool operations used to implement a methodology.

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