The Human ECO Compiler

Engineering Change Orders or ECOs are all too prevalent in ASIC design. Unfortunately there are few tools that directly support these “last minute” changes to a design. So it’s left to us humans to figure out a solution. This paper will cover the ad hoc solutions that have been developed for implementing ECOs. Topics to be covered: • basic definitions: the types of ECOs • where in the flow to make the change • advanced netlist dissection techniques • implementing large ECOs using thousands of gates • equivalence checking: your best friend • back-end issues • why ECOs are really a management problem, and how to deal with it