HIGH-PERFORMANCE IC DESIGN & VERIFICATION

Our IC design software helps engineers create the next generation of DigitalRF CMOS ICs, GaAs/SiGe RFICs, and SIP/SOC designs. Modern high-performance IC design is made possible by innovative circuit topologies which enable the integration of digital, analog and RF functionality as well as new device and process technologies that drive optimization of size, power, cost and yield. At GHz operating frequencies, critical on-chip embedded passives including spiral inductors and MOM capacitors must be carefully designed to account for 3D and full-wave effects. All on-chip parasitics must be accurately accounted for and extracted to model the key loss components and corresponding signal degradation. Furthermore, as transistor counts increase dramatically to provide large-scale functional integration and compensate for lossier silicon, new circuit simulation strategies and tools must be adopted to fulfill concurrent demands for accuracy, capacity, speed, and robust convergence.

Ansoft's technology can meet the challenges of modern high-performance IC design and is easy to adopt because of its complete integration within established customer IC design flows. AnsoftLinks allows HFSS, Q3D Extractor, and SIwave to be used with a few button clicks to extract GHz accurate S-Parameter models, W-elements and Full-Wave SPICE models for on-chip interconnects, and complete IC packages. Nexxim natively supports Spectre and HSPICE netlist formats and device models and integrates directly within industry-standard IC design flows for transient and harmonic-balance circuit simulation. In addition, these tools are dynamically linked by Ansoft Designer for final verification of the IC with package and board parasitics included. All Ansoft products can be used as point tools to enhance existing design flows or as tool suites to maximize performance and yield.

SIMULATION Ansoft Designer® Integrated schematic and design management for RF/analog mixed-signal applications Nexxim® Frequency and Time domain circuit simulation

EXTRACTION HFSS™ 3D full-wave solver Full-Wave SPICE™ High-frequency SPICE Models Q3D Extractor® 3D quasi-static solver SIwave™ PCB/BGA full-wave solver for SI/PI analysis

DESIGN AUTOMATION AnsoftLinks™ EDA/MCAD import Distributed Solve Distributed parametric computation Optimetrics™ Parametric optimization