Case Study: Xilinx achieves faster tapeouts, reduced storage costs and productivity gains with Solution-Soft

Solution-Soft’s GDSII compressor (GDZIP), MEBES compressor (MEZIP), Dynamic Link Library (DLL) and Tapeout Client Software Deliver Reduced Tapeout Cycle Time, Productivity Gain, and Cost Savings for Semiconductor Industry

Xilinx, a leading programmable logic device company, was struggling with rapidly growing GDSII and MEBES file sizes—often tens of gigabytes—driven by advanced process nodes and aggressive OPC, creating storage, transfer, and bandwidth bottlenecks. To address this, Xilinx implemented Solution-Soft’s gdzip and mezip compressors, the DLL for transparent on‑the‑fly decompression into EDA tools, and Solution-Soft’s Tapeout Client for reliable file transfers.

Solution-Soft’s gdzip reduced GDSII files by about 3–10× versus gzip and mezip reduced MEBES files by 30% to as much as 10×, while the DLL left files compressed on disk and the Tapeout Client provided automatic resume, retransmission, and email status. Xilinx now compresses all GDSII/MEBES files, uses the Tapeout Client for transfers to mask shops, and has seen faster, more reliable transfers (making a T1 line adequate instead of upgrading to T3), lower storage and tape media costs, quicker archive/restore, higher productivity, and payback within one year.

Xilinx

Wolfgang Leitermann

Sr. Manager, Operations Tools