Virtual prototyping speeds mixed-signal IC design

Raja Mitra, Cadence Design Systems
(08/21/2006 9:00 AM EDT), EE Times

Current design trends for high performance systems-on-chip (SoCs) are prompting designers to adopt more and more analog/mixed signal (AMS) contents in the overall design. Unlike digital designs that are quantized in the time and amplitude domains, AMS designs are more complex because performance, noise and other factors need to be controlled continuously in time and amplitude domain with very strict tolerances.

While the cost and performance benefits of SoCs are well known, in reality the complexity of design and verification of AMS ICs are making cutting-edge designs very time consuming and error prone, hence cost ineffective. The problem is further exacerbated by the lack of skilled AMS designers and adequate EDA tools.

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