Archive for the 'Custom Designer' Category

Hello!

Do you ever

• wonder what the latest news is for Synopsys Custom and AMS solution? how others are using Synopsys solutions?
• wish you had insight into the latest advances in Synopsys solutions?
• have the urge to send comments to Synopsys team, via your smart phone?

The day you all have been waiting for has finally arrived; our Analog Insights blog is Back! Our mission is to create an interactive place where information can be shared and discussed among our design community, from a pure Analog spice-level circuit to an advanced SOC design.

Because Synopsys Custom and AMS tools portfolio is extremely diverse and comprehensive, our range of topics will vary from analog, RF, to mixed signal from a simulation and design angle. The goal of Analog Insights is to also provide accurate information about the flows or solutions that would benefit our end-users and improve performance and productivity.

For example, you will be able to find:

• List blogs where we would provide tricks and tips to improve simulator performance and convergence (for example “5 tips to spice up
your PLL design :^), I know you are all disappointed..)
• Interview blogs with CAD, design, verification, and modeling engineers to get more insight on their work and their best practices using Synopsys AMS tools
• Technical blogs, where we would go deeper on specific Custom design and AMS subjects
• Industry analysis blogs, where we would capture incoming hot trends in technologies and describe Synopsys solutions
• Webinars, Videos showcasing advanced features and/or flows

We of course welcome your inputs and suggestions on how to improve our blog, as we want it to be innovative, instructive and interactive. I hope you would appreciate and use this blog. See you at our next blog!

NanoTime is our transistor-level static timing product for custom designs. Since Custom Designer is for custom design too it was natural that we’d integrate the two tools together. Released in June of 2010, the NanoTime integration into Custom Designer lets users do concurrent timing and SI analysis for designs of up to 6 million devices and see the whole timing picture in schematics and layout.

We are pretty excited about this new integration and held a webinar on the topic this week. If you missed, don’t worry, it is archived on our website and you can watch it here.

Fred

For those of you who made it to the recent San Jose SNUG meeting, you may have noticed a presentation titled, “Using Custom Designer to ‘Blow Up’ a Design”. I can assure you there were no pyrotechnics involved – the ‘Blow Up” really meant ‘Scale Up” since the paper detailed how we were able to use the power of Custom Designer to reverse the sands of time.  Our normal IP flow is a forward migration from an existing process node down the scaling curve to a more advanced – smaller – node.  In this case, several customers requested a 130nm implementation of a piece of our production proven IP that had just been released on 65nm. Our customer made this request for a variety of reasons but one key reason was tied to the higher cost of 65nm mask production. Moving the design to 130nm would save them a ton of money even if it seems to be moving backwards.

We pondered how we could do this work within the tight time schedule allotted by the customer. They needed a working design in three months and we didn’t have time to start from scratch.

Enter Custom Designer. In use by hundreds of our Solutions Group analog IP designers, its open framework, features, powerful scripting capabilities and overall flexibility were to be the key to resolving this problem.

For those of you who missed my SNUG presentation, we’ve written it up and posted it on the Synopsys website:

Reverse Process Migration from 65nm to 130nm in Under Three Months

Enjoy,

Bob

I’m new to this blog stuff. I usually spend my days with my head down working through specs, schedules and the accompanying blizzard of emails and phone calls as we work out the details of the next big release. So, again, welcome–and here we go!

When I was asked to do this blog, I thought, “What would I say?” and in that reflection I realized that I should take a short trip to the past and summarize what we’ve been up to here at Synopsys.

When I joined Synopsys, I had to tackle the immense problem of architecting a custom design solution almost from the ground up. We already had a lot of the problem solved—we had our world-class transistor-level simulators, our strong offerings in digital design and physical verification, and all of the other pieces that make Synopsys the world-class company that it is. We also had a pretty clear idea of how analog/mixed-signal design teams build their flows and use our tools, as well as the tools of many other EDA companies.

We also had access to many excellent solutions in the open-source and open-licensed software realm. We had standards like Open Access for the database, TCL for the scripting language and the myriad of other design standards that Synopsys has been proud to support because it solves a bigger problem for the industry at large.

What we needed was a solution that would tie all of this together. We knew there were problems. Essentially, EDA tool innovation for custom and analog design was stalled and we needed to solve a number of problems with modern solutions. We chose three guiding concepts:

1. Productivity
2. Openness
3. Familiarity

We picked these concepts because each of them in their own way represented a block to moving the state-of-the-art forward.

The overriding concept we focused on was improved productivity. Face it, schedules shrink and when your design slips your competitors are waiting to pounce. Without a solution that improves your productivity, you don’t have a solution.
Another key concept was openness. The complex environments that designers build  today demand an end to proprietary formats, uncooperative tools and some way to glue them together without learning yet another programming language (ah!
 another hidden productivity gain!).

Familiarity was another requirement because we wanted to increase productivity, not destroy it. Ever sit down to a new version of software and find that you need to [shudder] read the manual? We knew that no matter how cool our new tool was, no one could afford to adopt it if there was too much pain and agony involved in earning how to use it.

Fast forward to 2008, when we released Galaxy Custom Designer. It was architected to bring all of these concepts into being. Add to that our simulators, our digital tools, our physical verification tools and the fact that we make them all work together and now you’re talking are real solution!

There’s so much we can’t put in a whitepaper or a datasheet or in the formal documentation. So we’re going to use this blog to share our experts’ tips and tricks so you can get the most out of your custom design flow.

I look forward to blogging (I really do) and working with my colleagues Kishore and Bob and their teams to provide you with a place to see what we are up to. We’ve traveled a long road to get where we are, and now it’s time to show you what’s in store on the road ahead.

I hope you enjoy it!

Fred

Hello, and welcome to our new blog on the state of custom and AMS IC design at Synopsys. We set out some years ago to address the need for alternatives in custom and analog design software, and with the launch of Galaxy Custom Designer in 2008 we are seeing that vision realized.

Synopsys has amassed a powerful presence in the circuit simulation market. Our flagship products, HSPICE and CustomSim, form the backbone of transistor-level design and verification worldwide. Behind these products is a very talented group of individuals who are hard at work on solving some of the thorniest problems facing the EDA market.

Our own digital and analog IP design groups use these products to provide cutting-edge solutions for tough problems. Our proven AIP is used in designs worldwide and before it gets to you, it’s been through the wringer by a set of designers who have no mercy for bad chips.

I’d like to tell you what we have in store for you on this blog.

We have asked two of our most respected thought leaders in their domains to post entries on this blog:
Kishore Singhal: circuit simulation expertise
Bob Lefferts: a user’s perspective designing with Synopsys’ custom design flow
and, of course, I will continue to post my thoughts on custom design and implementation

In the coming weeks, each blogger will post entries on topics in his domains of expertise. You can expect everything from the technical background of the tools, tips and tricks to make you more productive, and ways to extend and integrate your design flows. And every now and then members of our technical teams will also share their experiences with you.

So thanks for reading this reinvigorated Analog Insights blog today. I can guarantee you—there’s a lot more to come!