CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

22 September 2008

Product News

Cadence Virtuoso Platform Enables Custom IC Designers to Achieve Breakthrough Results

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced the availability of the latest update (IC 6.1.3) to its next-generation Cadence® Virtuoso® custom IC design platform. Cadence continues to provide a complete solution enabling customers to design custom integrated circuits reliably and with a high level of productivity. This latest release incorporates new technology as well as significant performance improvements in existing technology, offering advanced solutions for the custom design of chips proven in production by dozens of customers.

A new design-centering flow enables customers to measure and refine their circuits, and increase their confidence that those circuits meet predicted yield targets. This flow is further enhanced by a unique integration of the Virtuoso Multi-Mode Simulation engines with the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment XL, providing customers with up to three times the interoperability performance gain.

“We continually improve our leading-edge technology to ensure it remains the ideal software for complex custom and mixed-signal design,” said Srinivas Raman, corporate vice president of research and development at Cadence Design Systems. “We added significant performance-enhancing capabilities to the Virtuoso platform’s IC 6.1.3 release that enable customers to boost productivity while delivering their complex products on schedule and with high reliability.”

New physical design technology in version 6.1.3 includes express parameterized cells, which deliver up to a 10 times performance improvement while maintaining interoperability. New routing capabilities native to the Virtuoso platform’s cockpit address the challenges of sub-90-nanometer chip routing and the usability improvements have been demonstrated by customers to cut layout creation time by 30 percent.

Cadence Virtuoso Multi-Mode Simulation solution was recently updated with “turbo” technology in SPICE, RF and mixed-signal (AMS), delivering up to a 10 times performance gain. These results were validated by a number of customers who have endorsed its ease of adoption and performance gains.

“Cadence offers a complete solution for custom IC design with tightly integrated flows built on many years of expertise in the highly complex area of analog and mixed-signal designs,” said Sandeep Mehndiratta, marketing group director for the Virtuoso platform at Cadence. “The Virtuoso platform’s IC 6.1.3 release of our next-generation custom IC design solution has been proven in production usage by multiple customers, including Cambridge Analog Technologies, announced separately today. Coupled with the continuing advances reflected in our product road map, this release will help ensure Cadence remains the premier provider of custom IC design solutions.”

With more than 30 partners connected to the Virtuoso technology via the Cadence Connections® program, the Virtuoso technology is at the center of an extensive design ecosystem which is necessary to build today’s multi-faceted designs. Additional alliances with the world’s leading foundries have led to the creation of more than 20 process design kits which are available for download today and have been optimized for the Cadence Virtuoso platform.

Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.

Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.

CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.

Subscribe