Anybody that has ever used a wrench (or even a hard leather shoe heel) to pound a nail into a wall because they didn't have access to a hammer has probably come to realize that a tool (be it a hammer, an EDA tool, or a stdcell library view) is NOT a sure solution to a problem. EDA tools (and library views) DO need to be trustworthy, BUT they can never be "real" (they are just MODELS of reality), and a user of same needs to know when to question the result and to NOT blindly accept that "the tool says that it is fine". The deeper that we go in submicron, the more that this will be driven home. If not by other tools, then just by DRC decks not being DFM decks. Maybe President Reagan's comment to Premier Gorbachev about "trust but verify" should apply to design engineers and EDA tools as well...
|
trust but verify
