Processor intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has signed on to the INSITE collaborative research program on design at nanoelectroics research institute IMEC (Leuven, Belgium).

The INSITE program was started in 2009 and now has more than 10 participants with a focus on enabling design for chip process nodes at 7nm and beyond.

INSITE makes use of the knowledge gained in IMEC's lithography and logic device scaling programs to help companies anticipate design parameters and options for next-generation systems and applications. Developers are now faced by a large number of potential design choices at 7nm including: the required number of lithography exposures, device architecture such as FinFETs or lateral nanowires, the local interconnect scheme, cell architecture and the metallization scheme.

"Optimizing advanced nanotechnology nodes is highly complex and it needs focused expertise to meet challenges in areas such as patterning and power," said Simon Segars, CEO of ARM, in a statement issued by IMEC.

IMEC also announced that it collaborated with EDA and IP vendor Synopsys Inc. on an interconnect resistivity model to support the screening and selection of alternative interconnect metals and liner-barrier materials at the 7nm node and beyond. The research center also opened a new spinoff, IMEC Florida, focusing on photonics and high-speed electronics IC design.

 

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