MENU

Cadence boosts productivity at nodes down to 20-nm by enhancing unified custom/analog flow

Cadence boosts productivity at nodes down to 20-nm by enhancing unified custom/analog flow

Technology News |
By admin



The expanded custom/analog flow – spanning design, implementation, and verification – includes a DFM capability integrated within the Virtuoso environment, and the integrated Virtuoso Power System, which provides a signoff-accurate way to manage power and signal integrity issues. These enhancements, and many more, are aimed at boosting designer productivity across all process nodes.

The unified custom/analog flow offers enhancements including in-design DFM capabilities integrated within the Virtuoso environment that automatically locate and fix potential DFM violations concurrently during the design process, enabling design teams to confidently address manufacturing variability. Another element of the flow is the introduction of the new Cadence Virtuoso Power System. The Virtuoso Power System provides an integrated, comprehensive, and signoff-accurate way to manage power and signal integrity issues in-design – including IR drop and electro-migration interference.

Critical new editing, estimation, and automation features help deliver unified intent, abstraction and convergence throughout the flow, essential for optimal Silicon Realization. Such new capabilities in the Virtuoso v6.1 environment enable even greater layout productivity, enhanced data-sharing around the globe, and seamless technology integration.

A new waveform viewer – tuned for handling large transient simulation databases – eliminates the need for design teams to buy and integrate a third-party tool.  Other enhancements include automated constraint checking; a new design-rule editing engine designed to handle the complexity of advanced node rule sets; and an interactive short locator that guides the designer through a find-and-fix process for difficult layout-versus-schematic errors.

Finally, the Virtuoso Accelerated Parallel Simulator’s new distributed SPICE capabilities extend designers’ productivity for realizing design intent from specification within the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment to foundry-qualified SPICE models.

“A unified custom/analog flow enables our customers to achieve a faster path to silicon success than patching together point tools,” said David Desharnais, senior director, Silicon Realization product marketing. “With the bold enhancements we’ve made to our Virtuoso flow, users can expect the utmost in productivity and predictability for their complex custom, analog and mixed-signal designs.”

The unified custom/analog flow, available immediately, embodies the tenets of the EDA360 vision and delivers on the Cadence approach to Silicon Realization through pervasive design intent, abstraction and convergence. The flow aims to bring a holistic approach to analog, custom digital, RF, silicon/package co-design, and mixed-signal design, implementation and verification. Key elements of unique intent, abstraction, and convergence in the flow include:  

Intent

  • Built-in publishing and design checking software facilitates maintaining design intent in a globalized work force
  • Support of the Common Power Format ensures design intent is maintained across analog/digital domains

Abstraction

  • Analysis of pre-extraction parasitics helps model the potentially detrimental parasitic effects and guards against them
  • Simultaneous top down and bottom up full-custom floorplanning enabling advanced high altitude visualization and  increasing custom layout productivity
  • Use of fully integrated VerilogA, VerilogAMS and Wreal models for mixed-signal simulation enabling higher performance at all levels of validation

Convergence

  • Uses signoff-proven engines within the Virtuoso environment, enabling a more efficient “correct-by-construction” design methodology that eliminates lengthy signoff iterations
  • New automation to enable automated and concurrent find-and-fix methodologies for LVS, DRC, and DFM optimization in-design

Virtuoso-based Silicon Realization custom/analog flow claim to deliver productivity boosts, with customers consistently reporting gains of 25 to 30 percent over the use of point tools. The flow includes Virtuoso Schematic Editor, Virtuoso Analog Design Environment, Virtuoso Multi-Mode Simulation technologies, Virtuoso Layout Suite, Virtuoso Power System, and Virtuoso DFM.

Visit Cadence at www.cadence.com

If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :    eeNews on Google News

Share:

Linked Articles
10s