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Berkeley Design Automation
Delivers Industry's First Comprehensive
Noise Analysis Tool for Complex Nanometer Analog/RF Circuits
True SPICE
Accurate Results for Every Type of ADC, PLL, Frequency Synthesizer, and
VCO
Santa Clara, CA, — April 30, 2008— Berkeley Design
Automation, Inc., provider of Precision Circuit Analysis™
technology for advanced analog and RF integrated circuits (ICs), today
announced the availability of the industry's first comprehensive noise
analysis tool for complex analog and RF circuits. The tool, called the
Noise Analysis Option™, handles every type of complex analog
and
RF circuit, including all analog-to-digital converters (ADCs),
phase-locked loops (PLLs), DC:DC converters, frequency synthesizers,
and voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs). Leveraging Berkeley Design
Automation award-winning Analog FastSPICE™ and RF
FastSPICE™ technology, the Noise Analysis Option is fully
compatible with existing flows, produces true SPICE accurate results,
and is already silicon proven.
Device noise is insidious to GHz nanometer-scale analog and RF CMOS
circuit performance. Until now, it has been either impractical or
impossible to perform transistor-level analysis of the impact of device
noise for many complex analog and RF circuits including sigma-delta
ADCs, video DACs, fractional-N PLLs, frequency synthesizers,
and
wideband VCOs. Design teams have had to rely on hand calculations,
system-level models, or costly silicon measurements. With the
introduction of the Noise Analysis Option, Berkeley Design Automation
is the first company to provide transistor-level noise analysis -
including analysis of the impact of white and flicker noise - with true
SPICE accuracy for every type of circuit. More than a dozen Berkeley
Design Automation customers worldwide are already using the tool on
production circuits.
"Device-noise-related issues have a critical impact on the design of
our
high-performance nanometer analog/RF and mixed-signal circuits," said
Osamu Kobayashi, Director Mixed-Signal LSI Lab, System LSI Development
Laboratories, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. "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."
The Noise Analysis Option, which is immediately available, includes the
following functionality:
- Transient-noise analysis 5x-10x
faster and 5x-10x higher capacity than any other tool.
- Periodic steady-state (PSS)
convergence with up to 50,000 element capacity.
- Periodic noise (pnoise) analysis
that has
no accuracy/performance tradeoff and is 5x-10x faster than any other
tool for complex circuits.
- Oscillator phase noise (oscnoise)
analysis that delivers unmatched accuracy on autonomous circuits,
provides node and device noise contribution, and automatically provides
impulse sensitivity function (ISF) information for every node.
The tool reads standard Cadence Spectre® and Synopsys
HSPICE®
netlists and models. It is fully integrated into Cadence Virtuoso
Analog Design Environment and can operate from a command line. It
produces standard output formats and includes sophisticated
post-processing.
"We design highly complex, ultra-low power RF/analog and mixed-signal
SoCs for biomedical applications," said Alan Wong, Wireless IC Design
Lead at Toumaz Technology. "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."
Berkeley Design Automation tools include Analog FastSPICE™
circuit simulation, Noise Analysis Option™ device noise
analyzer,
RF FastSPICE™ periodic analyzer, and PLL Noise
Analyzer™
stochastic nonlinear engine. The company guarantees identical waveforms
to the leading "golden" SPICE simulators down to noise floor (typically
0.1% or less) while delivering 5x-10x higher performance and 5x-10x
higher capacity. It achieves this by using advanced algorithms and
numerical analysis techniques to rapidly solve the full-circuit matrix
and the original device equations without any shortcuts that could
compromise accuracy.
Design teams from top-10 semiconductor companies to leading startups
use Berkeley Design Automation tools to solve big analog/RF
verification problems. Typical applications include characterizing
complex blocks (e.g., PLLs, ADCs, DC:DC converters, PHYs, Tx/Rx chains)
and running performance simulation of full circuits (e.g., wireless
transceivers, wireline transceivers, high-speed I/O macros, memories,
microcontrollers, data converters, and power converters).
"Virtually every customer designing complex analog and RF circuits in
nanometer CMOS has asked us to extend our award-winning Analog
FastSPICE technology to provide fast and accurate circuit simulation
that includes device noise impact," said Ravi Subramanian, president
and CEO of Berkeley Design Automation. "With the Noise Analysis Option,
we are proud to deliver the industry's first practical and
comprehensive noise analysis tool for complex analog and RF circuits.
The results our first dozen customers have obtained from this tool
further reinforce our strong track-record in delivering
silicon-accurate noise analysis for nanometer analog and RF designs."
About
Berkeley
Design Automation
Berkeley Design Automation, Inc.
is the
recognized leader in advanced analog/RF verification. Its Precision
Circuit Analysis technology combines the accuracy, performance, and
capacity needed to verify GHz designs in nanometer-scale silicon.
Berkeley Design Automation has received numerous awards including EDN
Magazine’s 2006 Innovation of the Year, the 2006 Red Herring
100 North
America, and the 2007 Red Herring Global 100 Finalist. Founded in 2003,
the company is funded by Woodside Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners,
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., and NTT Corporation. For more
information, see http://www.berkeley-da.com.
Analog FastSPICE, RF FastSPICE, PLL Noise Analyzer, WaveCrave, and
Precision Circuit Analysis are trademarks and Berkeley Design is a
registered trademark of Berkeley Design Automation, Inc. HSPICE is a
registered trademark of Synopsys Inc. (NASDAQ:SNPS). Spectre is a
registered trademark of Cadence Design Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CDNS). Any
other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their
respective owners.
PR for Berkeley Design Automation – Cayenne Communication LLC
Michelle
Clancy, 252-940-0981, michelle.clancy@cayennecom.com
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