When Magma decided to become a leading provider of analog and mixed/signal tools, it knew it was in for a fight. And, that the task would require both time and money. Now over two years later, it has become a highly competitive supplier of design tools for these markets and is challenging the competition for the leading supplier role. The key to such achievement is not only outstanding product architecture and capabilities, but also great market analysis and the absolute desire to listen to its customers requirements.

The Titan Mixed Signal Design Platform

When I looked at the Titan family of products, I found that it covers all of the required tools for analog/mixed signal design. It ranges from schematic entry, to circuit simulation, to accelerators, IP reuse and analog building blocks for verified design entry and reuse. The breath of tools offered can be seen in figure 1.

Figure 1. The Titan Family of Products

The Titan Base provides all of the fundamental tools required for either analog or mixed/signal design entry, analysis, and layout. As companies target advanced process nodes for manufacturing, schematic entry must become aware of the potential parasitic effects deriving from the geometries resulting from abstract schematic entry. Thus it is not only important but in fact required that the schematic editor be aware of the requirements imposed by the layout editor. Magma has implemented a layout aware schematic editor that understands the layout requirements and helps designers avoid implementations that will create potential problems in layout. I do not have to point out that Time To Market is a fundamental measure of a project success or failure. By avoiding potential downstream problems, the Titan platform saves both time and money and increases the probability of a successful product release.

FineSim capabilities have made it possible for TSMC to validate it for its 28 nm Reference Flow 11.0, a recognition highly sought after by all major EDA tools providers. Circuit simulation of designs targeting that process node is a demanding task, both due to the size of the circuit and to the number and complexities of the design rules that have to be met. FineSim was successfully used last year to simulate a 500 million gate design, proving that circuit size is not a limitation of the tool.

Of course every analog simulator must be SPICE accurate. FineSim's architecture incorporates both SPICE and Fast SPICE engines and also uniquely uses Electrically Exact Models (E2M) that improve performance without any loss in accuracy. But this remarkable feature is not enough to properly support mixed signal designs. FimeSim allows designers to verify both digital and analog blocks together. This provides a significant productivity gain to the development team. The required feedback loop when using a digital simulator and an analog simulator to verify a mixed signal design is prone to errors due to synchronization errors as the results of simulations in one technology have to be used as inputs to simulations in the other technology.

The Mar Effect

Analog IP has had a slower growth and acceptance life than digital IP. There are reasons for this state of affairs. Magma was both wise to avoid the teething problems of this technology and quick to recognize that it was coming of age. So, two years ago, it purchased a startup company called Sabio Labs and with the acquisition it insured itself a place as the leading provider of analog IP in the industry. The secret ingredient: Dr. Mar Hershenson.

Dr. Hershenson, Mar to most of us, is a pioneer in the area of analog IP. Her contributions to EDA have been recognized by the industry and this year she was awarded the Marie R. Pistilli Award during the 2010 DAC conference. Mar is the Vice President of Product Development in the Custom Design Business at Magma. You can read a good profile of her at http://www.aycinena.com/index2/index3/mar%20hershenson%202010.html. After receiving her PH.D from Stanford, Mar co-founded Barcelona Design. The company sold parametric analog IP that customers could modify to their own requirements. This was technologically unique, but the market failed to materialize in the number expected. Thus, like most pioneers, Mar had to bow to financial pressures, and Barcelona Design ceased operations.

But the idea was good and a nucleus of engineers followed Mar to form Sabio Labs. Not soon after, Rajeev Madhavan, Magma CEO, recognized the importance of IP in the analog market. He knew Mar and so Magma purchased Sabio Labs. Their technology was a good complement to the one Magma already had developed and, according to Mar, the timing was right to allow a seamless integration.

At this point Magma not only offers good tools complemented with good design automation IP, but also provides tools for IP reuse and building blocks to develop custom IP blocks. Without doubt this market segment is very dynamic. Companies, including startups, continue to invest in this market, but Magma now enjoys both a technological advantage and a market presence that allows it to benefit from its continued development of tools and IP targeting both the analog and the mixed signal designs. The growth of consumption of mobile data and communication, together with the need of computing products to interface with the physical world in real time guarantees that the market segments related to analog/mixed signal design will continue to grow at a rate superior than the average growth of EDA. Using the Titan Platform tools customers will find themselves riding the leading wave of technological capabilities.