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IC design verification

Find ESD weak spots in the design review, not in the lab. We check your design against ESD rules and simulate it against the safe operating area.

What we do

Verification applies the same ESD-aware simulation and rule checking to your full chip, cell by cell and path by path.

  • ESD design review service for IP modules and for the full chip
  • ESD design rule compliance and robustness checks, with automated verification tools and flow
  • SOA-based verification: find IC components that operate outside their ESD safe operating area
  • Chip-level prediction of CDM robustness
  • Current-distribution analysis, for example to catch non-uniform activation of multi-finger ESD cells

Who this is for

IC design houses and library vendors who want an independent ESD review or an automated ESD check in their flow.

HBM simulation of a multi-finger ESD NMOS showing different finger currents
Troubleshooting non-uniform activation of a multi-finger ESD cell. Different substrate resistances (set by the SWS spacings) make the fingers conduct unevenly, and the 6 kV stress pushes a finger past its pass level.

Verification inside your design flow

ESD verification connects marketing pin specifications, ESD technology IP, library cells, product IP and the full-chip integration.

ESD design flow from product definition through design to qualification with deliverables at each step
The ESD design flow supported by Novorell, with services and deliverables mapped to the IC product development timeline.

Catching what review misses

In a power-supply pad ring cell, measurement showed that the protection never triggered. Simulation reproduced the failure, and the re-designed cell then behaved as predicted. The same loop applies to your design before it is taped out.

Measured and simulated TLP curves of a power supply pad before and after a fix
Measured and simulated ESD performance of a power-supply pad ring cell, before and after the fix.

Tell us about your ESD challenge

Send a short description of your technology, product or failure and we will tell you how we would approach it.