GDZIP Reduces Storage and Bandwidth Requirements for Large Semiconductor Manufacturer
Friday, November 1, 2024 at 12:00 PM EDT
Topic:
With so many of today’s electronics products requiring more and more capabilities, semiconductor companies are addressing these needs with larger and more complex IC designs. As these designs continue to grow at an alarming rate annually, many semiconductor companies face significant issues with their infrastructure reliability and performance to handle the large volume of large GDSII chip design files.
Challenge:
This semiconductor manufacturer was not happy with several aspects of their IC design infrastructure. The amount of online storage required for their semiconductor design file repository § The time it took to transfer design files between their storage systems and their design workstations § The amount of time required to perform their data archive process.
Being thorough strategist, this manufacturer was also greatly concerned with the continued explosion in their design sizes with many designs currently in the GB file sizes and their constantly shrinking available portion of resources.
Lastly, they also hoped to help ease their network bandwidth requirements between themselves and their foundry and mask shop partners (most of who had already adopted Solution-Soft’s gdzip compression technology).
The GDZIP Solution:
When presented with Solution-Soft’s gdzip compressor, which is optimized for GDSII files, the client systematically tested it against their current solution (a gzip based compression technology). They conducted an intensive evaluation that compared the performance of gdzip versus gzip on their GDSII file repository of nearly 3,000 design files. In summary, their results showed that on average, gdzip compressed GDSII files were 3 times smaller than gzip compressed files and the gdzip compressor performed nearly 1.5 times faster than gzip.
With so many GDSII files, it made immediate sense to replace gzip with gdzip throughout their entire process. This meant modifying a number of process management scripts and replacing calls to gzip with similar calls to gdzip. The modification itself was quite simple and straightforward and they easily accomplished it in under 4 man-hours.
The Result:
Today the client has successfully completed their standardization on gdzip for all aspects of the GDSII design process. Through gdzip’s use, they enjoy the benefits of tripling the compression rates of their GDSII files. These benefits include a dramatic savings in file access times, data back-up & recovery times, LAN network bandwidth, and faster and more reliable monthly tape-out’s to all of their partners in throughout the world.
According to their Tapeout Engineer, Juergen Geissler, “Solution-Soft's compressor gdzip has saved us a considerable amount of storage space, and backup time. Since our partners also use the compressors we both benefit from shorter, more reliable and more secure ftp transfers."
About The Client:
The client, a major European Semiconductor Manufacturer, is a leading innovator in the international semiconductor industry. They design, develop, manufacture and market a broad range of semiconductors and complete system solutions targeted at applications in multiple industries.
About Time Machine:
Software Virtual Clocks for Time Travel Testing. Simulate past and future dates effortlessly with Time Machine®, enabling comprehensive testing of your date- and time-sensitive applications. Ideal for validating critical business processes like quarter-end and year-end processing, billing cycles, regulatory compliance (including Year 2038), and policy lifecycles during integration, upgrades, virtualization, cloud migration, and containerization. Eliminate the risks and downtime associated with system clock resets in complex environments like Active Directory and Kerberos.
About Solution-Soft:
The Leader in Virtual Clock and Time Travel Testing Solutions
Since 1997, Solution-Soft has been at the forefront of virtual clock software and time travel testing solutions, empowering organizations in the ever-evolving digital world. Our flagship product, Time Machine, has revolutionized application testing, enabling thousands of companies, including 47 of the Fortune 100 US companies, to reduce costs and accelerate project delivery by an average of 3 – 10 times across traditional systems and containerized applications.
The Time Machine Product Suite extends these capabilities, optimizing cloud migration, test automation, Agile/DevOps, and containerization testing. Our latest innovation, Time Machine for Containers, supports standalone Docker containers and large-scale Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters (including a 16,000+ CPU core, 1,300+ namespace deployments).
Trusted by over 2,000 customers worldwide across diverse industries (including 3M, AMEX, BBC, Boeing, and more) and partnered with industry leaders like Accenture, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat, Solution-Soft, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, provides cutting-edge solutions for your time-sensitive testing needs. Learn more at www.solution-soft.com or call +1.408.346.1400.
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