Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced that Global Unichip Corporation (GUC) successfully deployed the Cadence® Clarity™ 3D Solver in its simulation workflow to design a complex network switch with hundreds of 112G PAM4 long-reach (LR) lanes. A 5X boost in simulation performance was key to GUC’s success. With proven scalable and high-performance system analysis and interconnect technologies, Cadence is a key enabler for hyperscale computing applications, including cloud data center and optical networking.
The efficiency of the Clarity 3D Solver required no partitioning of the design, thereby eliminating any concern of inaccurate results attributed to a fractured approach. On top of the “no partitioning needed” benefit, the GUC engineers achieved a five-fold speedup compared to legacy tools that relied upon partitioning. The Clarity 3D Solver’s combination of exceptional accuracy, speed and capacity enabled GUC to perform tradeoffs and what-if analysis before tapeout and to optimize the detailed ultra-scale, high-performance flip-chip BGA (HFCBGA) package design for peak performance at the lowest cost.
Furthermore, GUC streamlined its design process by utilizing the comprehensive Cadence IC Packaging design and analysis solution, including the Cadence Allegro® Package Designer Plus for implementation, Clarity 3D Solver for interconnect modeling, and Sigrity™ SystemSI™ technology to evaluate the 112G signal quality. The comprehensive solution embraced the integrated single-vendor workflow from Cadence that accelerates design turnaround time, enabling multiple optimization iterations while meeting all project milestones.
“As an ASIC design leader, delivering advanced designs to our customers in a timely manner is critical,” said Igor Elkanovich, CTO of GUC. “Enhanced performance for 3D finite-element method interconnect modeling was a key requirement for a successful collaboration. The Cadence Clarity 3D Solver delivered high-performance computational 3D full-wave modeling with gold-standard accuracy, enabling us to achieve optimized signal and power integrity along with a faster path to design closure. With a complete Cadence flow for design, analysis and signoff, we completed the design of a complex networking application for our customer.”
“Exciting new technology such as Clarity 3D Solver, Celsius™ Thermal Solver, and Sigrity X are foundational to Cadence cross-domain, multiphysics solutions addressing EM, thermal and SI/PI for today’s electronic systems. Customer response has been tremendous to the unprecedented performance, capacity, scalability and accuracy of the Clarity 3D Solver performing true 3D simulations of complete systems including interposer, package, and PCB,” said Ben Gu, vice president of multiphysics system analysis in the Custom IC & PCB Group at Cadence. “GUC is continuing its design engineering excellence through design of this next-generation data center switch, for which Cadence Allegro, Clarity and Sigrity technologies played a significant role in the design, analysis and signoff of hundreds of 112G LR lanes.”
