NetApp is a world leader in consolidated, simplified storage solutions for semiconductor and electronics manufacturers. Our solutions prevent costly time-to-market losses with the ultimate in data availability, migration, and protection—as well as optimum system performance and simplicity.
Leading semiconductor manufacturers that rely on NetApp for their storage solutions include AMD, Applied Micro Circuits, Cadence Design Systems, Motorola, National Semiconductor, NVIDIA, Xilinx, Zoran, and many others.
Supporting the Design Process The semiconductor and electronics design process typically includes six stages as illustrated below.
With each step in this process, the volume of complex design data grows exponentially and becomes increasingly mission critical. If the engineering team misses the "tape out to fabrication" date, for example, the company may have to wait months for another fabrication slot, critically hindering time-to-market.
In addition to accommodating rapid data growth, semiconductor and electronics manufacturers face a number of additional challenges, including the complexity of the design environment, performance and scalability, data availability, data reuse, and remote collaboration.
Managing Complex Design Environments
Semiconductor manufacturing depends on a variety of sophisticated design applications and tools in use by a large number of diverse users. These tools are often supported by a complex infrastructure consisting of multiple operating systems, servers, and storage systems. Engineers must be able to access different types of singular data sets—both current and historic—regardless of location. As a result, administrators are faced with an endless stream of application version changes and tool interoperability issues, compounded by growing user demands. Ineffective management of such an environment may prevent a company from meeting its time-to-market goals.
NetApp storage solutions unite different platforms and systems, improving both interoperability and accessibility. Native support of NFS and CIFS within the NetApp kernel eliminates the need for emulation software such as PC-NFS or Samba—and allows Windows®, UNIX®, and Linux® clients to share the same copy of data. NetApp solutions support cohesive access to both network-attached and storage area network data. They reduce the complexity and risk associated with the product development environment.
Performance and Scalability Issues
The design process requires access to large amounts of data, especially during the simulation stage. It is not uncommon for a chip manufacturer to deploy thousands of Linux servers to achieve the desired performance. A typical chip design can require as much as 10TB of storage. As a result, the IT department must forecast and manage extremely large amounts of data, which can be a difficult planning task.
The flexibility and modularity of NetApp solutions offer the highest performance and greatest capacity options. As performance needs grow, storage infrastructure can be expanded independent of the compute infrastructure. New hardware can be implemented easily and quickly—in minutes—and storage capacity can be expanded without downtime. What's more, NetApp unified data management and data storage solutions allow centralized administration and a single console view of the environment's array of filers and dispersed data.
Meeting the Data Availability Challenge
Probably the most fundamental challenge faced by chip designers is data availability. A large NetApp customer tells us that losing one month in the product development cycle can cost the company $40 million. A complicating factor is the remote and heterogeneous nature of the design environment. As a result, comprehensive data protection is imperative. Time lost due to unplanned system outages, interoperability conflicts, or user error—as well as planned downtime for backups or upgrades—can greatly hinder a company's profitability.
NetApp solutions provide the ultimate data security in complex design environments. With an inclusive storage architecture and complete management, caching, and replication tools, NetApp extends data safeguards outside the data center to remote design centers and the desktop—isolating data from corruption and deletion. Our unique Snapshot™ capability provides quick recovery of deleted or corrupted data files for increased productivity. Planned downtime is also minimized with online disk expansion. Plus, our integrated RAID implementation protects against disk failures to avoid disruption of service to users.
Reusing Data
Semiconductor firms often reuse historic design information in new projects to speed time-to-market and ensure consistency. Regulations call for manufacturers to maintain design data in reference form over extended periods for safety, repair, and liability. And legal, marketing, and other staff frequently seek access to read-only data sets to do their jobs.
In order to maintain the most cost-effective data access, different types of data command different data storage solutions. The result is an ongoing dilemma concerning how much availability and performance should be sacrificed in the name of cost. Until recently, manufacturers were forced to store this class of data either on more expensive online storage or on cheaper, less accessible optical and tape archives. NetApp offers an efficient, accessible, cost-effective solution that bridges the data reuse storage gap. Chip manufacturers can now match the right class of storage with the appropriate data. NetApp solutions consolidate resources and streamline performance among online, near-line, and offline equipment. Plus, NetApp is at the forefront of storage best practices development, able to assist your company in determining standards for data most suitable for online versus near-line or archival storage.
Remote Collaboration
The semiconductor industry requires extensive collaboration and information sharing among geographically dispersed engineering, design, and support teams—including outsourced contractors. They need highly efficient, level, and uniform data access. However, because of the distributed nature of the design process, duplicate and conflicting versions of critical data often reside on different systems at multiple sites. While chip manufacturers grapple with trying to identify, isolate, and retrieve data from a variety of physical locations, they often lose precious time-to-market advantage.
NetApp allows the most effective remote collaboration via centralized data oversight, localized file caching, and data replication. Where companies once were forced to place multiple administrators around the globe to control data movement and process management, with NetApp, often a single administrator is able to expertly manage data at all sites. The optimum data flow that results from a NetApp solution increases your staff's productivity and performance and improves your company's time-to-market.
Summary: Consolidated, Simplified Storage Solutions
The consolidated, simplified NetApp storage solutions offer many benefits to semiconductor and electronics engineering teams:
- Multiprotocol support. Native support of NFS and CIFS within the NetApp kernel allows Windows, UNIX, and Linux clients to share the same copy of data.
- High performance. Faster check-in and check-out operations reduce build times from days to hours. Our powerful storage capacity holds large simulation and testing files, while allowing you to reallocate space on-the-fly between each iteration.
- Availability. Our unique Snapshot capability provides quick recovery of deleted or corrupted data files for increased productivity. Planned downtime is also minimized with online disk expansion. Plus, our integrated RAID implementation protects against disk failures to avoid disruption of service to users.
- Scalability. Dynamic online disk expansion increases storage capacity without rebooting.
- Product data management. Large PDM files, which can be a bottleneck on conventional systems, are easily accommodated using NetApp hot-swappable, scalable storage. With our highly available cost-effective solutions, your company can streamline resources; lower its total cost of ownership (TCO); and compress idle, test, and work time. You'll be able to increase data availability and accessibility, improve data management and protection, bolster staff performance and productivity, heighten operational efficiencies, and reduce time-to-market.
