Date: 08/08/2011

Silicon Creations select Berkeley's Analog FastSPICE for circuit verification

Berkeley Design Automation Inc, has announced that Silicon Creations, LLC, has selected its Analog FastSPICE Platform for full-circuit verification, block-level characterization, and device noise analysis of their high-performance custom analog and mixed-signal designs.

"We optimize our custom analog and mixed-signal circuits for each individual application and have stringent verification challenges to ensure we exceed the required specifications," said Randy Caplan, president at Silicon Creations. "We selected the Analog FastSPICE Platform because it delivers nanometer SPICE accurate results 5x-10x faster than traditional SPICE simulators. Additionally, the full-spectrum device noise analyses demonstrate excellent correlation with measured silicon. AFS completed full-circuit post-layout locking simulations of a complex 28nm fractional PLL in less than 8 hours - over a 10x speedup compared to other simulators. Similar results were achieved for high performance clock-and-data recovery circuits (CDRs)."

Berkeley defines that Analog FastSPICE Platform is unified verification platform for nanometer analog, RF, mixed-signal, and custom digital circuits, which combines foundry-certified nm SPICE accuracy, 5x-10x faster single-core performance than any other SPICE circuit simulator, >10M-element capacity, and the comprehensive silicon-accurate device noise analysis. The AFS Platform is a single executable that uses advanced algorithms and numerical analysis to rapidly solve the original device equations and full-circuit matrix without any approximation says Berkeley. It includes licenses for AFS Nano SPICE simulation; AFS circuit simulation, AFS Transient Noise Analysis, AFS RF Analysis, and AFS Co-Simulation.

"We are excited that Silicon Creations has selected the Analog FastSPICE Platform for their verification and characterization flow," said Ravi Subramanian, president and CEO of Berkeley Design Automation. "The design of custom high-performance analog and mixed-signal circuits in deep nanometer process nodes requires an accurate verification flow that can support the stringent specifications of each application. Silicon Creations' selection validates, once again, that Berkeley Design Automation is an essential partner to leading edge companies designing high-performance nanometer analog and mixed-signal circuits."