IC Design Complexity Management Services

IC Design Complexity Management Services provides managers with a robust quantitative analysis of the complexity, or design difficulty, for each IC design project they’re about to undertake. The analysis not only quantifies design challenge, but also enables the professional services team to suggest ways to reduce complexity without compromising the design’s functional capabilities. Reduced design complexity translates directly into shorter cycle time or reduced project staffing requirements (or both). Thus, “complexity management” is an important strategy for achieving competitive advantage.

Professional service consultants work with the customer’s design team to gather the primary factors contributing to the chip’s design complexity-circuit composition, process technology, transistor count, clocking, timing, power consumption, etc. Using the Numetrics NMX-ERP™ software, service consultants rapidly calculate and calibrate the design complexity of ICs, as well as IP modules. Engagement occurs during the planning stage of a new project or during project execution to assess the impact of a proposed spec change.

The deliverable is a comprehensive assessment of chip complexity, which is expressed in terms of the number of Complexity Units of the design, a standardized measure of design difficulty developed by Numetrics. Complexity Units measure execution difficulty. Customer deliverables include a ranking of the complexity of each functional block on the chip relative to all the other blocks, plus an analysis of the underlying causal factors driving the complexity of each block.