Semiconductor Engineering Administrator

The ENOVIA 3DEXPERIENCE Semiconductor Engineering Administrator (SEEAH) Role simplifies the administration of the sophisticated infrastructure required at each design site to support efficient workspace creation.

It eliminates the need for deep administrative expertise at each site using a site-specific server to manage the client-side infrastructure required to support the workspaces for a development project. This includes replication of not only the design data, but also design tool configuration settings.

To join a project, a designer chooses from a list of developments being managed by the local server, creates a workspace, and then launches one or more tools specifically configured for working with the data, guaranteeing that all designers are working with the right data, and working in the right design environment.

ENOVIA Semiconductor Item Management

Semiconductor Engineering Administrator Benefits

Ensure Design Efficiency

Centralized control of the design environment required for semiconductor design, including specification of design tools to use and their configuration settings, guarantees designers run the right tools configured properly for the development. Development settings are pushed to development servers which manage development instances at design centers or on individual machines.

Reduce Product Errors

A client tool is provided which automatically sets up development areas, and invokes design tools specifically configured for use in the development area. If caching features are enabled, development areas link to read only copies of design data at both the module and file levels, efficiently utilizing disk space.

Improve Design Accuracy

Read only copies of design files for a development are automatically fetched into local module and file caches before they are needed for linkage into development areas, and are automatically removed when they are no longer needed.

View Problems Quickly

Defects can be reported against product revisions, and their impact assessed. If a product is included in a hierarchy of products, impact assessment is hierarchical. Easily generate a report on all defects included at any level in a product hierarchy, or find all hierarchies in which a defective product exists.

Accelerate Time to Market

Track activity associated with resolving defects. A given defect may be fixed multiple ways. For example, a fix might be made in hardware or in software, or targeted to specific development branches. Waivers and dispositions provide flexibility as to how the impact of a defect is reported.

ENOVIA Semiconductor Item

Semiconductor Engineering Administrator Highlights

Modeling Product Hierarchy

IP blocks or libraries are mapped to model versions, and are interconnected using hierarchical relationships. An exact analogy exists with modules and module hierarchies in Semiconductor Hardware Designer, and a tight integration allows managed design data structures in DesignSync servers to be synchronized with hierarchically connected model versions in Semiconductor Engineering Administrator such that issue and defect tracking can be managed at the enterprise level. IP blocks and libraries that are managed in Design Data Management (DDM) systems other than Semiconductor Hardware Designer can be included at the leaf level in a DesignSync module hierarchy using external hierarchical relationships (hrefs). Additionally, external IP or libraries, and the hierarchical relationships representing their use in designs can be modeled manually in Semiconductor Engineering Administrator, providing a DDM-agnostic solution.

Impact Analysis

A defect is reported against a model version.  Newer versions are presumed to contain the same defect. With due diligence, it is possible to determine which previous version the defect was introduced in.  If resolved, the version in which the defect no longer exists is also captured, establishing a window of impact between the “introduced in” and “fixed in” versions. Any parent model version on up through the model version hierarchy which includes any affected model version is presumed to  also be impacted. A “where used” capability provides a report of all model versions which are affected by the defect. A “roll up” capability propagates defects from the bottom to the top of any model version hierarchy in which the defect is present.

Tracking Defect Resolution Activity

It is also important to track activity associated with fixing or resolving a defect. Once a defect exists in a model version or versions, it always exists. It is only possible to fix a defect in a new versiont. Furthermore, a single defect may be fixed in different ways, so could result in multiple defect actions. For example, it might be possible to fix a defect in software, hardware or both. Also, a defect might only manifest in a particular mode of operation, or temperature range, in which case a “Known Problems and Solutions Report” (KPS) is useful.  Defects are associated with model versions and “defect actions” track activity associated with fixing the defect.

Separation of Customer Facing and Internal Defect Tracking

Issues may be used to track customer reported defects, and defects may be associated with issues. This provides separation between communication associated with the customer, and internal activity associated with fixing or resolving defects.

Collaboration & Approvals

Users can benefit from a wide range of capabilities for global enterprise collaboration. Those capabilities include the ability to manage and organize shared documents and structured product data; they also enable the creation of digital workspaces for virtual teams to work together. Users can easily raise issues, organize meetings and track decisions. Any object lifecycle modifications can be formally approved using routes defined by end-users or from standard route templates.

Microsoft Integration

Users can create and access 3DEXPERIENCE data from the most popular Microsoft applications: Word®, Excel®, PowerPoint®, Outlook®, Windows Explorer and Windows Desktop Search. This capability enables enterprise-level collaboration while not disrupting the established productivity of end-users. With product content being managed with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform rather than on users’ PCs, organizations are able to create, manage and review product content more securely.