Consumers nowadays want handheld and portable systems that
can do it all—wireless operation, eye-candy video playback, you name it.
But many of these crowd-pleasing features involve a great deal of mixed-signal verification.
At 65 nm, the contribution of layout
parasitics stemming from interconnects
is wreaking havoc on timing closure.
Unfortunately, many Spice-based
simulators lack the capacity for the job,
while fast-Spice variants lose too much
in accuracy.
In Discovery AMS 2007, Synopsys has
sought to meld the accuracy of Spice with
the performance of fast-Spice simulators.
Further, Discovery AMS now sports tighter
integration between the HSIM fast-Spice
engine and the VCS digital simulator,
making for higher throughput and greater
flexibility in verifying mixed-signal system-on-a-chip designs at all abstraction levels
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The culmination of a three-year development effort, the company's XA simulation technology gives the latest revision of
Discovery AMS a built-in form of "simulation intelligence" that lets users take advantage of fast-Spice speed without
having to be simulation experts.
"Fast Spice is heuristic-based, so users
have to set certain configuration files targeted to the circuit being simulated to
optimize performance," says Geoffrey
Ying, director of marketing for Synopsys'
mixed-signal products. "‘Black belts' in
fast Spice know how to do this, but average users may not."
Thus, the XA technology offers built-in
topology, device, and hierarchy recognition that eliminates the need for setting
of simulator configuration files. XA technology is an option for the NanoSim and
HSIM simulators.
A user-controlled accuracy command
enables easy tradeoff of accuracy and
speed. For example, an accuracy setting
of one provides the fastest performance,
while a maximum setting of seven results
in full Spice-level accuracy at the expense
of speed.
Discovery AMS 2007 is available
now, as is the NanoSim/HSIM XA technology option. Contact Synopsys for
package pricing.
Synopsys
www.synopsys.com
