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Mark Chen, Manager of the Project Design Department



  Sunplus

“We selected Analog FastSPICE because it delivered compelling speed and accuracy advantage in the verification of complex analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. We evaluated Analog FastSPICE versus traditional SPICE tools, including recently announced accelerated SPICE technologies. Only Analog FastSPICE was able to complete the characterization of all our ADCs, PLLs, I/O, and other complex analog and mixed-signal circuits, delivering results 5x -13x faster with true SPICE accuracy.”
 
Tirdad Sowlati, Sr. Director of RFIC Design Engineering
Skyworks

“Verifying analog/RF mixed-signal complex blocks and full circuits is critical to delivering high-quality silicon on time. We have been using Analog FastSPICE Co-Simulation to verify our power control loop and our full-chip transceiver. It is easy to use and delivers true SPICE accurate results 5x-10x faster with far higher capacity than traditional SPICE-based mixed-signal solutions.”
 
NXP Semiconductors
NXP Logo


“NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in mobile phones, personal media players, TVs, set-top boxes, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices.”

 
Osamu Kobayashi, Director Mixed-Signal LSI Lab, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd
  
     Fujitsu Logo

“Device-noise-related issues have a critical impact on the design of our high-performance nanometer analog/RF and mixed-signal circuits. The Noise Analysis Option gives us true SPICE accurate ADC and PLL noise analysis formidably faster than traditional SPICE transient simulations that do not even include device noise on Fujitsu Laboratories circuits. It is the only tool we know that is able to deliver true SPICE accurate transistor-level noise analysis for our complex mixed-signal circuits.”
 
Broadcom Corporation
  
    BroadcomLogo
 



“Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications.”

 
Dr. Hiroaki Kosugi, Director Digital-RF Development Office, Corporate R&D at Matsushita 
  

   
     Panasonic Logo
 

“Berkeley Design Automation is an essential partner for us in achieving success in the development of digital-RF designs. Designers face enormous challenges in verifying digital-RF mixed-signal integrated circuits in terms of accuracy, performance, and capacity. Berkeley Design Automation has achieved the significant reduction in verification time with full SPICE accuracy and the ability to run critical full-circuit verification for a variety of mixed-signal digital-RF circuits.”

 
QUALCOMM Incorporated
       
QUALCOMM Logo
 


“QUALCOMM is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies.”


 
Alan Wong, Wireless IC Design Lead


     Toumaz
  “We design highly complex, ultra-low power RF/analog and mixed-signal SoCs for biomedical applications. We have significant challenges getting accurate noise analysis results with traditional RF analysis tools. Noise Analysis Option allows us to quickly analyze our oscillator and periodic blocks giving typically 5x speedup for no loss in accuracy, when compared to our existing methods.”
 
Tony Shakib, Chief Executive Officer

   zensys
  “Verifying our RF communication module requires extensive transistor-level simulation of a complete RF transceiver with the highest possible accuracy. Analog FastSPICE completed characterization of our RF transceiver, including a complex sigma-delta modulator, more than 5x faster than our traditional SPICE simulator with true SPICE accuracy. With Analog FastSPICE we will be able to tapeout with higher confidence and get our products to market faster.”
 
Jim Thomas, Corporate VP of Product Development

     Spansion
  “Verifying our leading-edge flash circuits with advanced multi-chip packages requires transistor-level performance simulation with over 200,000 elements, including 142 mutual inductors. Traditional SPICE simulators cannot handle this complexity, and digital fastSPICE simulators do not have the required accuracy. Analog FastSPICE can produce true SPICE accurate results for this critical application. AFS completes what is otherwise impossible in less than 9 hours.”
 
Dr. Mark Dawkins, RF Systems Director
   
   

    FutureWaves

“Verifying our high-performance RF tuner for mobile digital broadcasting requires transistor-level simulation at the full-circuit level with true SPICE accuracy. Analog FastSPICE reduced characterization times for our complex-blocks such as frac-N PLLs and RF AGCs by 5x- 10x with identical results to our traditional SPICE simulator. Analog FastSPICE also delivered full-circuit performance simulations of our entire digital RF tuner front-end with true SPICE accuracy, which was impossible with any other simulator in any reasonable timescale.”
 
Julian Tham, Vice President, RF and Mixed-Signal Design
   
         SiPortLogo

“We have very challenging and demanding analog/RF verification requirements for our mobile receiver SoC designs. We use Analog FastSPICE for our critical complex blocks and even our full transceivers. It delivers identical results 5X to 9X faster than traditional SPICE simulators on our larger circuits.”

 
Sridhar Kotikalapoodi, Vice President of Design
    


 Summit Logo
 

“Getting it right first time, on time is important for us. Verifying our digitally programmable, highly integrated precision power management ICs requires transistor-level simulation with true SPICE accuracy. Traditional SPICE simulators were too slow and did not have sufficient capacity. Digital fastSPICE simulators were difficult to set up and were not accurate enough. AFS fits right into our flow and simulates our complex switching DC-DC converters up to 14x faster than traditional SPICE simulator while producing identical waveforms. With AFS we are able to achieve full-circuit performance verification including power-up sequences with true SPICE accuracy.”

 
David Kang, Vice President of Engineering
     Axiom Logo  

“Analog FastSPICE produced identical results as our SPICE simulator 5x faster for our full-circuit power amplifier with all the packaging models. We also used Analog FastSPICE on complex RF blocks where it delivered identical results 14.5x faster than SPICE and was the only tool to deliver silicon-accurate noise analysis”

 
Yoshio Watanabe, General Manager of the IP Platform Solutions Division
  


     Fujitsu Logo

“Berkeley Design Automation offers an essential verification technology that is critical to the success of analog and mixed-signal IP Macro design in Fujitsu’s Electronic Devices Business Unit. Our analog and mixed-signal verification requirements exceeded the capabilities of traditional SPICE and digital fastSPICE simulators. Analog FastSPICE delivers accuracy that is as good or better than traditional SPICE at significantly higher performance than digital fastSPICE simulators on a wide variety of Fujitsu’s own analog and RF circuits. It also enables us to solve problems we could not address before. We are now committed to deploying this technology across our business.”

Kenneth Weller, Sr. Director of Design Automation
Skyworks

“Verifying our high performance analog/RF designs for mobile connectivity requires transistor-level simulation of very complex circuits with true SPICE accuracy. Analog FastSPICE provides a 5-7x turnaround time advantage, and a 10x capacity advantage over traditional SPICE, with true SPICE accuracy.”

 
Pierre Guebels, Vice President of Engineering
   

   
     PhaseLink Logo
 

“A few weeks before tape-out, we needed a tool that could accurately verify the complete power-up sequence of our design including crystal oscillator ramp-up, band-gap reference start-up, EPROM-driven calibration of LC-VCO, and PLL locking sequence. Analog FastSPICE delivered full-circuit performance simulations of the entire design, enabling us to verify our complete power-up sequence with true SPICE accuracy, which was impossible with any other simulator. We were very impressed that Analog FastSPICE worked right out of the box on our leading-edge circuits.”

 
Tamotsu Hiwatashi, Senior Manager, System LSI Division
     ToshibaLogo
 

“Berkeley Design Automation offers a breakthrough verification technology that is critical for Toshiba's consumer electronics business. Our verification requirements exceeded the capabilities of traditional SPICE and digital fastSPICE simulators. Analog FastSPICE delivers accuracy that is as good or better than traditional SPICE at higher performance than digital fastSPICE simulators on analog and RF circuits. This enables us to perform verification tasks that were previously impossible.”

 
Keith Errey, COO
   

    ToumazLogo
 

“Accurate and thorough design verification of our complex analog/RF blocks is a fundamental priority in the healthcare market where Toumaz operates. In just 4 days Analog FastSPICE delivered true SPICE accurate results that would have taken our traditional SPICE simulator 26 days to complete. As a result, we were able to verify a fix to a subtle but critical sigma-delta ADC problem that we may have missed with our normal analog simulator.”

 
Frank Carr, Vice President of RF Engineering

 Newport Media Logo           
    
 

“Our single chip, multi-band, multi-standard ICs for mobile digital TV applications have extreme verification needs. We’ve tried a number of simulators, and Analog FastSPICE is the only circuit simulator that can run our full-circuit and complex blocks simulations with full SPICE accuracy. It also cuts long runtimes on our critical blocks by more than 5X – again with full SPICE accuracy.”

 
Douglas Holberg, Vice President of Technology
       
         SiLabs Logo
 

“At Silicon Labs, we design industry leading high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs for a broad range of applications. Analog FastSPICE provides identical results as our traditional SPICE simulators 10x faster on complex pre-layout and post-layout circuits including PLLs and sigma-delta ADCs.”

 
Stephen Lloyd, Vice President of Engineering

  Beceem Logo
 

“By greatly improving the speed of our top level simulations we are now able to run larger sections of our chip and evaluate even more corner cases. With Analog FastSPICE, we can verify our complete WiMAX transceiver with full SPICE accuracy which was impossible with other simulators. We are also able to slash the long verification times for our complex analog and RF blocks by more than 5x – again with full SPICE accuracy.”

 
Mike Kappes, President
    
     IQ-Analog Logo
 

“We recently designed a wideband analog front-end IP for wireless applications and we needed a tool to verify that our complete design met spec prior to tapeout. The full-circuit included 10 simultaneously operating 12-bit ADC’s and DAC’s. The 64-bit version of Analog FastSPICE was able to run performance simulations of our complete wireless analog front-end - including all ten ADCs/DACs, as well as packaging effects - with full SPICE accuracy. We were able to fully validate the design to specification prior to tapeout while other simulators failed to even converge.”

 
Tom Hegedus, Vice President of Engineering
    
     SigmaTel Logo
 

“We have always wanted to run full-circuit simulation of our microcontroller designs since they contain complex analog components, but traditional SPICE cannot converge on them and traditional fastSPICE tools produce the wrong results. Analog FastSPICE finished what was impossible for every other simulator in just 12 hours. It also slashed our PLL simulations from 24 hours to 2.5 hours while producing identical results. With Analog FastSPICE we can tapeout our chips faster and with significantly more confidence in first pass silicon success.”

 
Matt Felder, Senior Analog Designer
     

SigmaTel Logo
 

“Our analog intensive mixed-signal ICs for digital multimedia applications push the limits of our design verification flow. Analog FastSPICE consistently delivers 5X to 10X faster performance compared to even multi-core traditional SPICE simulators with identical results. Analog FastSPICE also has the required capacity to enable us to verify our highly-integrated ICs at the full-circuit level.”

 
Srenik Mehta, Director of Analog Design Engineering
      
        Atheros Communications Logo
 

“The analog and RF circuits in our XSPAN™ and ROCm™ chipsets run at a wide range of frequencies from MHz to multi-GHz. We run extensive performance simulations that require full SPICE accuracy and can take days in traditional SPICE simulators. Analog FastSPICE is a great complement to our simulation environment and provides excellent performance improvement in long transient simulations with SPICE accuracy in a fraction of the time.”

 
Dr. Kirt Hong, Group Leader of Mixed-Signal Design, System IC Division
      LG  

"Analog FastSPICE provides us a tremendous advantage in achieving fast innovation and fast growth by delivering 10 times faster circuit verification with full SPICE accuracy for our most complex and innovative analog circuits. This speed and accuracy enables LG Electronics to accelerate the rate of innovation and deliver products to market much faster across our mobile communications, digital appliance, digital display, and digital media businesses."


 
Shoji Ichino, General Manager, Tech. Dev. Division, Electronic Devices Business Group

      Fujitsu
 

"At Fujitsu, our innovative product engineering teams design some of the world's most complex high-speed analog/RF and mixed-signal circuits. Many of these circuits are highly nonlinear and difficult to analyze with traditional RF analysis tools. BDA's RF FastSPICE allows us to quickly and accurately analyze our toughest VCOs and PLLs enabling our engineers to confidently tape-out their designs much faster."

 
Jun-ichi Okamura, Director Business Unit I

      


        THine
 

“Traditional SPICE simulators are too slow for accurate functional verification of the large analog circuits in our high speed interface IC designs. We’ve tried FastSPICE tools, but it is a big challenge to find acceptable high accuracy and performance settings when running these tools. BDA’s Analog FastSPICE provides us with both the accuracy of SPICE and the performance of FastSPICE, without the need to experiment with accuracy options.”

 
Jim Thomas, Corporate VP of Product Development


     Spansion
  “Our award-winning Spansion® MirrorBit® Flash memory technology pushes the limits of  circuit design creativity, simulation size and accuracy, so we are very careful about any new simulators we deploy. Frankly, we were skeptical when Berkeley Design Automation said Analog FastSPICE could produce results with the accuracy of our current SPICE simulator and run much faster without any changes to the netlist or our environment. After an extensive evaluation and qualification, we found that the tool delivers as promised.”
 
Dilip Sampath, Venture Partner with Panasonic

     
     
      Panasonic
 

“After an extensive evaluation, we determined that Berkeley Design Automation’s Precision Circuit Analysis technology presents a strategic competitive advantage to Panasonic and is critical to our success. We believe in the technology so much that we decided to invest in the company.”

 
Hiroshi Miyagi, Chief Technology Officer
    


Niigata Logo
 

“As we push the limits of CMOS integration, we run into substantial analog and RF circuit simulation runtime and accuracy problems with traditional tools. Berkeley Design Automation’s tool suite provides us a tremendous improvement in productivity by delivering more than 5 times faster verification with full SPICE accuracy. This enables Niigata Seimitsu to accelerate our rate of innovation and deliver products to market faster in the highly competitive TV tuner market.”

 
Yoshitaka Kinoshita, Product Development Officer
      

        Elpida
 

“Elpida’s advanced memory devices run at very high clock rates and must meet very tight noise specifications. The ability of PLL Noise Analyzer to provide fast and accurate transistor-level jitter analysis for the PLLs in our designs before tape-out enabled us to reduce the number of silicon prototype cycles and thereby accelerate our time to volume.”

 
William Walker, Vice President, Advanced LSI Tech. Research Center

      Fujitsu
 

"We were an early adopter of Berkeley Design's technology. We use PLL Noise Analyzer to analyze jitter in clock and data recovery circuits. The tool produces accurate results and is much faster and more reliable than our previous noise analysis methodology. Our engineers, who are fluent in HSPICE, were able to master PLL Noise Analyzer in a matter of minutes."

 
Matthias Voigt, General Manager, NEC Electronics GmbH
NEC  

"We view NEC's ability to reliably deliver high-quality analog IP as a competitive advantage for us in the European market. Using PLL Noise Analyzer, NEC is able to accurately analyze full PLL noise before tape-out. This capability helps NEC deliver working silicon on time."


Jun-ichi Okamura, Director Business Unit I
     

       THine
 

"At THine, we design a variety of LSIs with high speed interfaces that must meet very tight noise specifications under stringent cost constraints. The ability of PLL Noise Analyzer to provide accurate analysis enabled us to dramatically reduce our verification turn-around time. This capability allows us to deploy a robust analysis methodology for all of our designs."

 
Kunio Mori, General Manager, Server Systems Division
NEC  

"We design a wide variety of high-performance I/Os at speeds up to and beyond 10Gbits per second. Meeting phase noise and jitter targets is a significant design challenge. PLL Noise Analyzer is an innovative tool that enables us to accurately analyze the noise of a full, transistor-level PLL before tape-out. We have used PLL Noise Analyzer on our 90nm SERDES and found the tool to be fast, accurate and easy to use."



...And What Industry Experts are Saying…

 
Abbas El Gamal, Professor of EE and Director, Information Systems Laboratory

Stanford
 

“Noise and nonlinearity are becoming the limiting factors in the design of high performance analog and mixed signal circuits. The increased performance demands and circuit complexities make the noise analysis approaches used in traditional tools grossly inaccurate. The circuit analysis technology developed by Berkeley Design Automation provides fast and accurate noise analysis for current and future analog/RF circuits.”

 
Floyd Gardner, Industry Luminary and IEEE Fellow
Author of the best selling text "Phaselock Techniques"  

“Noise analysis of nonlinear circuits has been a difficult problem for a very long time. This difficulty has made the design of many of today’s analog-rich circuits such as PLLs and CDRs a time-consuming, error-prone, and expensive process, often requiring multiple silicon iterations. Berkeley Design Automation has demonstrated that it can provide designers a significant breakthrough in how they analyze these circuits, enabling them to accurately characterize their designs before silicon tape-out.”

 
Ali Niknejad, Assist. Professor of Elec. Engr. and Computer Sciences and Co-Director of the BSIM Project



UCBerkeley
 

“There is a myriad of challenges facing today’s designers of complex analog and RF mixed signal integrated circuits. The most pressing challenge is the requirement for silicon-accurate noise analysis of highly nonlinear subsystems, such as PLL frequency synthesizers and transceivers. BDA’s breakthrough circuit analysis technology allows silicon-accurate noise analysis of such circuits, enabling a faster path to successful silicon. This has a major impact on devices, circuits, and systems, all of which are major focus areas of our group’s research here at UC Berkeley.”

 
Michael Perrott, Assist. Professor of Elec. Engr. and Computer Science and Head of the High-Speed Circuits and Systems Group



MIT
 

“Today’s high-performance analog and RF ICs contain complex phase-locked loops to achieve high speed clocking, frequency synthesis, and/or clock and data recovery for networking and I/O applications. Accurate noise analysis of these circuits has been a significant challenge, making it difficult to achieve target design specifications under the constraints of area, power, supply voltage, and process technology. By delivering fast and accurate noise analysis, Berkeley Design Automation’s phase noise and jitter analysis technology provides an extremely useful tool in the design of today’s most complex high-performance analog circuits.”

 
 
           
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