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Chip-verification and -design flow focuses on low power

 

The latest generation of Synopsys’ Discovery verification platform upgrades the offering with new multicore simulation technologies, native design checks and low- power verification capabilities. As part of the introduction, its VCS functional verification product goes multicore: it gains the ability to fully exploit the power of multicoreprocessor hosts on which the software runs. The result is a claimed four-times speed-up in verification runs. The new CustomSim unified circuitsimulation solution also has multicore capabilities in a single, highly accurate verification solution that delivers similar benefits for large AMS (analogue and mixed-signal) circuits. Discovery 2009 incorporates low-power verification capabilities at multiple levels of abstraction, from RTL to transistor level. VCS with MVSIM delivers true voltageaware RTL and gate-level simulation, automated assertions, and comprehensive verification coverage as defined in Reference 1. CustomSim verifies complex power-management designs at the transistor level by identifying IR drop, electromigration and standby leakage problems.

This announcement follows closely on Sysnopsys’ introduction of its Lynx automated environment for integrated circuit design. Lynx is a suite of tools that manages silicondesign projects through the complete sequence of tools that designers must apply, implementing and monitoring complete design fl ows and methodologies. It guides engineering- level staff in the sequence and application of tools and design steps, and it has applications that provide reports and real-time insight into project progress for management. It comes with pre-confi gured, already-proven design methodologies, or you can tune any stage of the process to match the procedures in your own company. It also integrates methodologies for low-power design, and it has a pre-confi gured ARM design flow. By integrating expertise from the back end of the process—the foundry—design teams can avoid the loss of performance that comes with excessively cautious guardbanding critical parameters in the design, which is sometimes done to ensure a functional result. Lynx is primarily a production-fl ow tool— Synopsys has other products for the system-level and verifi cation spaces, as noted above—and is of greatest value to those taking designs to the fi nished-GDSII level. But, the company says, it’s not just for those doing megagate SoC designs, claiming that design teams producing smaller, mixed-signal chips already successfully use it.

Synopsys, www.synopsys.com.