Customer Specific ICs - Metal Programmable Cell Fabric Technology

Atmel's proprietary Metal Programmable Cell Fabric (MPCF) provides a dense array of digital logic that is customized to perform specific functions by metal routing. MPCF achieves transistor densities and therefore unit costs comparable to equivalent standard cell logic. Its major advantages are reduced design time (only metal routing is required) and reduced fabrication time and costs (only metal masks and fabrication steps are required, starting from uncommitted wafers that have been staged prior to metal deposition).

MPCF technology can form the basis of an entire ASIC, or can be integrated into a microcontroller-based architecture platform as in the CAP™ customizable microcontroller family. Customers can develop proprietary MPCF platforms that allow their products to efficiently evolve with new functions or features as their markets change. The same design tools from Cadence®, Mentor Graphics®, and Synopsys® that are used for standard-cell ASICs can be used for MPCF designs.

Atmel's MPCF Library
Atmel's custom-designed MPCF library contains over 400 cells. It has an 8-transistor core cell that is only 3.2um high and 2.0um wide in 130nm technology, and it uses 2 layers of metal for interconnect. Traditionally, a sea-of-gates design approach gives about 75% transistor utilization in placed cells plus 70% placement utilization, yielding a design that is just over 50% routable. Based on these assumptions at 130 nm, the achievable gate density is 156K gates per mm². However due to its efficient cell routing and additional metal layers available at 130 nm, ASICs using the MPCF are achieving 80% to 90% placement utilization allowing gate densities of between 170K and 210K gates/mm².