MonolithIC 3D Inc., a Silicon Valley startup specializing in 3D ICs, announces a milestone with its 2D and 3D ICs simulator tool. Industry professionals from 35 countries across the globe have downloaded the tool directly from the company’s website over 240 times. The MonolithIC 3D team has developed the open-source simulator called IntSim v2.5 to help study scaling trends and optimize chip power, frequency, die size, interconnect stacks and transistor parameters.
Zvi Or-Bach, President and CEO of MonolithIC 3D Inc., said, “We are very happy to see the build-up of interest in monolithic 3D IC technology. It is most encouraging to see the tool we have put into the market domain being adapted by an increasing amount of users and we are looking forward to seeing more tools being offered to the next frontier of semiconductor processing – monolithic 3-dimensional structures”.
The first version of this CAD tool, IntSim v1.0, was developed in 2007 by Deepak Sekar, during his Ph.D. with Prof. James Meindl at Georgia Tech as a 2D-IC simulator. MonolithIC 3D Inc. extended the tool to 3D-ICs and released that version of the simulator in March 2011. In the latest version, version 2.5, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) was added.
By using the friendly GUI, users can customize the simulator’s process and technology parameters to their own proprietary data, or they can select from predefined technology parameters spanning from 45 nm down to 10 nm which are based on the ITRS roadmap. To further assist users with a broad range of analyses, IntSim supports an automatic sweep of design parameters across a range of values.
In a Future Fab International Magazine’s article, Issue 30 (07/09/2009), the authors note that IntSim “utilizes a user-friendly graphical user interface and can be used to evaluate die size, the interconnect stack and power dissipation prior to design for different clock frequencies; make trade-offs between process, device, circuit, package and system quantities, and simulate impact of these quantities on chip frequency, power and die size; and interactively learn how modern VLSI chips are designed”.
IntSim v2.5 is available for free download at MonolithIC 3D Inc.’s website. A short video describing the software tool can be viewed here. IntSim v2.5 is Java-based and runs on Windows, Mac OS X and UNIX machines.
About MonolithIC 3D Inc.:
MonolithIC 3D Inc. is an IP company dedicated to innovation in semiconductor design and fabrication. It invented and developed a practical path to the monolithic 3D Integrated Circuit, which includes multiple derivatives for Logic, Memory and Electro Optic devices. The company was selected as a finalist of the Best of West 2011, which recognizes the most important product and technology developments at Semicon West.
