CHAPTER 19
OTHER TOPICS
19.1 LESSON FROM THE REAL WORLD: THE MANAGER’S PERSPECTIVE AND THE ENGINEER’S PERSPECTIVE
In Chapter 14, Gertrude Stein’s quotation “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” was slightly parodied as “A NAND2 is a NAND2 is a NAND2.” There it was used in negation, claiming that this is not necessarily true. I should like to point out that sometimes “A library is a library is a library is a library.” Several years ago, I was working in the library-development-and-support organization for a large semiconductor company where I produced what still remains the densest [and because of intellectual property (IP) sharing through various industry consortiums] the most widely used 90-nanometer libraries in the industry. Within that company, my development team was known for producing dense libraries. Located in the same building was the company’s high-performance microprocessor group. All was well between the two organizations because there was so little overlap. My team and I designed bulk libraries for other ASCI-oriented divisions within the company.
Meanwhile, the microprocessor organization designed silicon-on-insulator (SOI) processors. We designed dense libraries, doing such obvious low-performance techniques as allowing active and polysilicon “snake routes” for those other ASIC-oriented divisions within the company. The microprocessor organization was interested in performance libraries that did not have such parasitics causing and performance robbing layout techniques ...
