OpenAccess™ Release 2.2 Standard API Tutorial

It is widely accepted that integrated circuit (IC) design productivity is a limiting factor to realizing the
available transistor capacity of ICs today. The massive increase in data and need for more accurate modeling
due to the effects of shrinking feature sizes make it unreasonable to continue to transfer a design
between sequential applications using ASCII interchange formats. Cycle times in critical design loops
that depend on sequential processing using ASCII files for data transfer suffer significant file translation
overhead as those files grow with transistor count.
A logically central repository for design information makes it possible to overcome key failings of traditional
Electronic Design Automation (EDA) environments. A common information model enables great
efficiencies by eliminating data translation among design and analysis tools. IC design customers can
improve their choice among tools while realizing more effective and better performing design systems
when those tools utilize standard APIs for data access and manipulation. Software integrators of Computer-
Aided Design (CAD) systems for ICs can focus on methodology and functionality rather than the
incompatibilities in communciation between design tools.