CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
8 April 2008
Implementation Investments
Silicon Creations Tapes Out Complete Mixed-Signal Chipset Using Simucad Design Flow
Silicon Creations, a company that specializes in high performance analog and mixed signal integrated circuit design, successfully taped out their first complex chipset using an all-Simucad tool flow. Simucad Design Automation is a leading provider of Analog, Mixed-Signal and RF Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software.
The Silicon Creations Video-on-Fiber IC was designed, simulated and laid out using Simucad's TSMC CMOS018 0.18u Logic, Mixed-Mode, RF PDK and Simucad's Custom IC CAD design suite.
Jeff Galloway, Co-Founder of Silicon Creations, described the two ICs. "The purpose of the chipset is to aggregate then reproduce multiple serial links for transmission over a single 5GB/s optical link," Galloway said. "It is a mixed-signal IC with 7 PLLs. The process is 0.18um CMOS. There are roughly 20,000 transistors per IC. The analog/digital content is roughly 50/50. The dimensions of the two ICs in the chipset are 1500um X 1500um."
Galloway further described the toolset used. "We used Gateway for schematic entry, SmartSpice for analog simulation, Harmony for mixed-signal simulation, SILOS-X for digital verification and system modeling, Expert for layout editing, Guardian DRC/LVS/NET for physical verification, and HIPEX for hierarchical and parasitic extraction. We used a 16 machine computer farm to run SmartSpice for thorough analog verification."
"It was fun to work with a great customer on a complex project with a high quality PDK using a good toolset. This is why we had success on the first pass," said Mr. Michel Blanchette, lead PDK Developer and Senior Application Engineer at Simucad.
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