1. Purpose and scope
A released hard macro keeps working for its integrators only while someone looks after it. Integrators raise questions and find issues in their own use; the foundry changes its process, its models or its rule decks; new SoCs ask for the macro on a newer process or a different metal stack. This stage handles all of these, through a support route, maintenance releases and new versions.
Foundry changes need particular care. A change to a rule deck or a model can make a signed-off macro fail the new checks or shift its timing views, even though the silicon has not changed. The foundry and process team follows process change notices, assesses each for its effect on the macro, and the characterisation team updates the views where needed, through a maintenance release with notes that say what changed.
A port to a new process is not a maintenance release. It is a new version that is laid out, signed off and proven on silicon again, and it follows the lifecycle from the stage the change affects. The stage ends with end of support, when licensees are told support ends, with the date, the last version and any successor, and the design data and silicon records are archived.
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