ICD Brings Advanced RF Simulation and Verification Tools to Custom IC Design Flow

Over the past year Integrated Circuit Designs, Inc. (ICD) has greatly enhanced our design capabilities with the addition of a number of new state-of-the-art tools to our custom design flow. With constant improvement of our custom design flow through the addition of advanced design tools and software, ICD continuously endeavors to improve our performance, lower costs, shorten schedules and above all minimize technical risk in developing your product or IP block.

(PRWEB) October 15, 2004 -- Over the past year, Integrated Circuit Designs, Inc. (ICD) has greatly enhanced our design capabilities with the addition of a number of new state-of-the-art tools to our custom design flow.

Xpedion GoldenGate RF Simulator

ICD has recently added to our standard tool flow an advanced RF simulator, GoldenGate from Xpedion. While GoldenGate can indeed be seamlessly integrated into the Cadence Composer and Analog Design Environment (ADE), ICD, working with Xpedion Apps Engineers, has been able to integrate GoldenGate within our own custom design flow. This provides our designers with the benefits of state-of-the-art RF simulation without the costly overhead of the Cadence framework. Critical simulations such as phase noise of integrated VCOs can now be performed quickly and accurately by our designers, expanding our capabilities and chances for first-pass success on the most challenging projects.

Mentor Graphics Calibre DRC, LVS and xRC Verification Software

As analog and RF designs move far into the deep submicron region, the need for a faster and more accurate verification tool becomes quite evident. ICD has greatly improved our verification capabilites through the use of Mentor Graphics Calibre verification tools. Calibre has quickly become the de facto standard in the IC design community for fast, accurate verification and Calibre decks are provided by all of the major foundries. The use of Calibre as our primary verification tool puts ICD in line with what has become the industry standard for verification and greatly enhances our ability to perform accurate verification our large, deep-submicron designs.

Sonnet Software Sonnet Professional EM Simulator

There are many times that foundry-supplied spiral inductor models are inaccurate and/or limited to a few standard sizes and configurations. Additionally, there are many cases where circuit interconnects need to be simulated with parasitic inductance as well as capacitance taken into account. This is especially critical as operating frequencies increase to 5GHz and beyond. ICD has integrated Sonnet Softwares Sonnet Professional into our standard tool flow. In combination with ICD-proprietary inductor layout-generation software, spiral inductors can be quickly designed and laid out in a form which can be input to Sonnet Professional and simulated accurately. This capability enables us to design challenging circuits such as fully-integrated LC VCOs with a higher probability of success than using foundry-supplied models has had in the past.

With constant improvement of our custom design flow through the addition of advanced design tools and software, ICD continuously endeavors to improve our performance, lower costs, shorten schedules and above all minimize technical risk in developing your product or IP block.

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