Sondrel, a leading system-to-silicon IC design consultancy, believes that the increasing use of FinFET technology will cause new challenges for IC designers looking to benefit from the scaling benefits the new structures offer. Explains Kevin Steptoe, VP Engineering: "At the latest Design Automation Conference in Texas, much of the talk on the show floor concerned FinFETs. Similarly, we are seeing our customers - who include the largest names in the consumer, computer and graphics industries - already moving to such multi-gate or tri-gate technologies to benefit from the size reduction, increased integration and higher performance offered by these new structures. This is not as straightforward as moving from one process node to another. Sub 20nm requires users to learn new tools; it's not simply a matter of shrinking feature sizes and using standard cell placement techniques." Adds Sondrel's CEO Graham Curren: "One of the main reasons for using a specialist design house, such as ourselves, is that companies simply can't afford the investment - in time or money - to keep all engineering teams up-to-date on every design new innovation. Our model at Sondrel is to bring specific expertise to the partnership. So, for example, in this instance we have invested heavily to be able to offer a thorough understanding and capability in FinFET IC design." Sondrel
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