Ricardo Sung's Blog

Add PDK for Cadence IC617

Posted on Nov 18, 2021

No PDK no life. If you have used Cadence or other EDAs for PCB design, with symbols and footprints you can draw your schematics and PCB. So does IC617.
Now I will try to install TSMC 180nm RF as an example.

Download and extract the files

The shared tsmc18rf PDK downloaded from website is divided to several compressed files. If they are .rar type,

unar xxx.part01.rar

Enter your workspace and install PDK

  1. Here my workspace is /home/ricardo/Project and my PDK folder is /home/ricardo/Project/PDK.
cd /home/ricardo/Download/tsmc180
perl pdkInstall.pl

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Here 1P6M means 1 Poly Layer with 6 Metal Layer.
2. Convert CDB to OA. That is because Cadence after IC610 only supports PDK of OA. But take it easy. Cadence has a conversion tool.

# enter the father folder where you store your PDK in you workspace
cd /home/ricardo/Project/PDK
mkdir tsmc180OA
mkdir tsmc180OA/cdb
cp tsmc180/cds.lib tsmc180OA/cdb
# modify cds.lib in tsmc180OA/cdb
# delet all lines and add the CDB PDK path pointing to pdk
DEFINE tsmc18rf /home/ricardo/Project/PDK/tsmc180/tsmc18rf
# use the conversion tool to convert CDB to OA
cd /home/ricardo/Project/PDK/tsmc180OA
virtuoso&

Click tools->Conversion Toolbox->CDB to OpenAccess Translator and select the cds.lib which is modified in OA path.
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Then you will see a folder called tsmc18rf generated in tsmc180OA.
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And copy the folder to merge the same name folder tsmc18rf to tsmc180.

cp /home/ricardo/Project/PDK/tsmc180OA/tsmc18rf /home/ricardo/Project/PDK/tsmc180
  1. Go to /home/ricardo/Project/PDK/tsmc180/tsmc19rf, edit libInit.il and commit hspiceS using ;;.
    4
    *Actually I do not know why to commit hspiceS, but it do work well after I add the PDK in Cadence with uncommited libInit.il. *
  2. Cut and Passte “CONTROLS” section to the fist section in teckfile
    5
  3. Back to workspcae and run virtuoso&.
  4. Add lib to Tools->Library Manager.
  5. Enjoy it!