ANSYS RedHawk-SC is the industry-leading, gold-standard platform for signoff-grade power integrity, reliability, and electrostatic discharge (ESD) verification for advanced semiconductor designs, including Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), 3D-ICs, and advanced packaging. Built on a scalable, distributed architecture (the "SC" stands for "Scalable Computing"), it is designed to handle the massive complexity of modern chips.

Its core value proposition is to prevent chip failures related to power delivery (voltage drop - IR), thermal effects, and electrical overstress (EOS/ESD) before tape-out, ensuring first-silicon success and long-term reliability.

Key Expected Features & Enhancements in RedHawk-SC 2025

A 2025 release would be driven by the demands of 2nm/3nm processes, 3D-IC integration, and the need for system-level analysis.

1. Comprehensive 3D-IC & Multi-Die System Analysis

• Unified System Power & Thermal Integrity: A single, integrated workflow to analyze power delivery network (PDN) performance and thermal behavior across an entire 3D-IC stack. This includes die-die interactions, thermal coupling between chiplets, and the impact of through-silicon vias (TSVs) and micro-bumps on both electrical and thermal profiles.

• System-Level ESD Verification: Extending chip-level ESD analysis to the entire 3D system, verifying ESD protection networks that span multiple dies and the interposer, ensuring robust system-level ESD compliance.

• Advanced Packaging Model Extraction: Automated and highly accurate RLCK extraction for complex package substrates (organic, silicon) and interposers, seamlessly integrating them into the full-system RedHawk-SC analysis.

2. AI/ML for Signoff Acceleration & Prediction

• ML-Powered Dynamic IR Drop Prediction: Machine learning models that can predict dynamic voltage drop hotspots with high accuracy in a fraction of the time required for a full simulation, enabling rapid, iterative "what-if" analysis during the design phase.

• Intelligent Decap & PG Optimization: AI-driven recommendations for optimal decoupling capacitor (decap) placement, sizing, and power-ground (PG) mesh optimization to mitigate IR drop and power noise, automatically generating fixes that can be fed back into the layout.

• Predictive EM & Self-Heat Analysis: ML-enhanced electromigration (EM) and self-heat checks that can identify potential reliability wear-out issues under complex, real-world workload scenarios, not just static DC analysis.

3. Foundry-Certified Flows for the Angstrom Era

• Certification for 2nm/3nm & GAA FETs: Full support and certification for the latest process design kits (PDKs) from TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, including accurate modeling of Gate-All-Around (GAA) nanosheet transistors and backside power delivery networks (BPDN).

• Advanced EM Rules for New Interconnects: Updated and more complex electromigration rules to handle new materials (e.g., cobalt, ruthenium), new via structures, and the unique current density challenges in advanced nodes.

• Multi-Physics Reliability: Tighter coupling of electrical, thermal, and mechanical stress analysis to model the impact of thermo-mechanical stress on electron mobility and EM lifetime (a critical effect in 3D-ICs).

4. Cloud-Native Scalability & Performance

• Massively Parallel Distributed Analysis: Enhanced algorithms that leverage thousands of cloud CPU cores simultaneously to perform full-chip signoff analysis on the largest SoCs and 3D-ICs in hours instead of days.

• Elastic Cloud Licensing & Orchestration: A seamless, cloud-optimized deployment model that automatically scales compute resources based on job size, with integrated job orchestration for massive regression runs.

• Digital Twin Connectivity: The ability to export a "power and thermal digital twin" of the chip that can be used in system-level simulations (e.g., within ANSYS Twin Builder) to analyze chip-package-board interactions in the context of the final product.

5. Enhanced Usability & Debug

• Visual, Interactive Debug Environment: A next-generation visualization and debugging GUI that allows engineers to intuitively navigate through IR drop, EM violations, and thermal maps across multiple dies in a 3D-IC, correlating issues seamlessly.

• Root-Cause Analysis & Auto-Fix Suggestions: Smarter diagnostics that not only flag violations but also trace them back to their root cause (e.g., insufficient metal width, missing decap, high-activity logic cone) and suggest specific, automated corrective actions.

• Integration with ANSYS AVxcelerate: Direct links for using power and thermal profiles from RedHawk-SC to drive more accurate hardware-assisted verification and software power validation.