Tool Designs Passive Components For RF Applications

Designers of high-speed and complex wireless SoCs and RFICs need a means of creating passive components. Cadence’s Virtuoso Passive Component Designer represents a complete flow for the design, analysis, and modeling of inductors, transformers, and transmission lines. Starting from design specifications such as inductance, quality factor and frequency, the tool helps designers automatically generate the optimum inductive device for their specific application and process technology, resulting in higher performance and smaller area. A built-in 3D full-wave solver verifies the generated devices, eliminating the need for a dedicated inductor characterization-run and reducing the design turnaround time. Virtuoso Passive Component Designer is optimized for 90- and 65-nm process nodes, supporting advanced design rules and CMP constraints such as dummy metal fills and slotting. In addition to the wide variety of supported inductor and transformer geometries, it allows definition of custom geometries graphically or manually using parameterized cells, or Pcells. Virtuoso Passive Component Designer is easy to use and does not require electromagnetic expertise. The output is a complete process design kit (PDK) component with a symbol, schematic, layout and a simulation model. The built-in modeling capability converts S-parameter files into physical lumped-element models, ready for RF analysis using Virtuoso Spectre Circuit Simulator XL. Also provided by the passive-component design tool is a fast and accurate coupling analysis capability enabling designers to optimize the placement of inductors and transformers on the layout resulting in smaller silicon area and higher yield. Contact Cadence directly for pricing and delivery information. Cadence Design Systems
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