The number of analog and mixed/signals designs is increasing at a steady pace, and EDA companies are working very hard to establish a leadership in this sector. Both Cadence and Magma have issued press releases to this effect. Both execution speed and capacity of the simulator are key competitive elements, but the fundamental requirement remains accuracy. A fast but inaccurate simulation is worth nothing, in fact it is a detriment to the development team.

Cadence has just announced that X-FAB has qualified the Cadence Physical Verification System for the majority of its process technologies. Foundry qualification means that X-FAB has given its stamp of approval for silicon accuracy of the Cadence Physical Verification System across all of its process nodes.

In a separate release the company has also stated that Fuji Electric reduced by 25 percent both the development time for power management ICs and the verification time for systems by deploying the Cadence Virtuoso Accelerated Parallel Simulator. The Japanese IC power management company used the simulator in the Cadence Virtuoso Analog Design Environment, resulting in time savings while helping improve quality.

For its part Magma wrote that Diodes Incorporated has used FineSim SPICE multi-CPU circuit simulation technology to tape out two highly integrated synchronous switching voltage regulators. The AP6502 and AP6503, 340 kHz switching frequency external compensated synchronous DC/DC buck converters, are designed for use in consumer electronics systems such as digital TVs, LCD monitors and set-top boxes, which require ultra-efficient voltage conversion. Utilizing FineSim SPICE multi-CPU simulation technology, Diodes Incorporated significantly reduced simulation runtime, enabling them to increase simulation coverage by 3X to 4X without sacrificing accuracy.