Galaxy Custom Designer improves AMS productivity

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Galaxy Custom Designer improves AMS productivity

Synopsys' Galaxy Custom Designer provides a unified solution for custom and digital designs, thereby enhancing designer efficiency

Pradeep Chakraborty

Monday, October 13, 2008

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BANGALORE, INDIA: Synopsys Inc. recently unveiled its Galaxy Custom Designer solution, the industry's first modern-era mixed-signal implementation solution. Architected for productivity, the Galaxy Custom Designer leverages Synopsys' Galaxy Design Platform to provide a unified solution for custom and digital designs, thereby enhancing designer efficiency.

Galaxy Custom Designer delivers a familiar user interface while integrating a common use model for simulation, analysis, parasitic extraction and physical verification. It is the first-ever implementation solution built natively on the OpenAccess database for legacy designs as well as a new componentized infrastructure offering unprecedented openness and interoperability with process design kits (PDKs) from leading foundries.

Subhash Bal, Country Director, Synopsys (India) EDA Software Pvt. Ltd, said that the Galaxy Custom Designer is a new offering. "With this, we have entered the mixed-signal market. We are leaders in verification, and now we have entered the implementation market. The whole story is about openness. We have worked with TSMC on the Galaxy Custom Designer. We are working with the open innovation platform and the IPL alliance of TSMC," he added.

The custom design market is estimated at $400mn and growing. It refers to both analog and digital, as opposed to cell based designs. Presently, nearly 100 percent of the designs include customized functions. Bal noted, "Although the analog mixed-signal (AMS) may represent 10 percent of the chip area, it represents about 50 percent of the chip cost and accounts for 70 percent of the respins."

Net benefits of Galaxy
Improved productivity is the major net benefit designers can hope to achieve by using the Galaxy Custom Designer. One, it has a unified environment for custom and cell based design, and two, the tool has a familiar user interface integrating simulation, analysis, physical verification, etc.

Bal added: "We made the look-and-feel familiar as it is important that these tools talk to the sign-off tools that users are familiar with. It is a next-generation solution architectured from grounds up."

Impact on India
According to Bal, the iPDK has been developed at Synopsys India. Next, there have been several customer interactions, including Wipro. Also, by making the product easier and open, the Indian designers can now address regional needs for MNCs.

How will it be useful for smaller companies? Surely, if there is a small IP company, it can use the Custom Designer. If the tool gets adopted by a lot of OEMs, this will provide a boost to the marketplace. The value is in its openness. If a company is able to port what it has done, that would be the key. Synopsys has entered the segment with complete product support.

Why now?
The key question: why the Galaxy Custom Designer, and why now? Simple! The modern AMS era is characterized by interdependent custom and digital functions; analog IP is now mainstream; and there is the phenomena of an increased embedded memory. Current solutions are said to possess limited horizon. Hence, Galaxy!

A new solution is said to be the need of the hour, which is complete: verification and implementation, with common models, extraction, analysis. Re-spin is not an option. Next, unified implementation, which addresses both custom and cell based needs. Custom and cell based functions are highly interdependent. Also, close to 100 percent of designs today are AMS.

Finally, the solution has to be open and portable. This accelerates the design cycle and IP portability. Also, quicker access to process details is a must! Built for productivity, Galaxy Custom Designer has a similar look and feel, and works using fewer clicks; three as against six!

Inside Galaxy
Synopsys' Galaxy Custom Designer's Schematic Editor has productivity enhancers such as real-time connectivity, on-canvas editing and smart connect. Similarly, productivity enhancers for its Layout Editor include push button DRC and Extract, standard TCL and Python PCells, and auto via and guard ring generation. The WaveView Analyzer has features such as highest capacity and performance, complex analysis toolbox, and an automated TCL verification scripting.

A unified platform for cell and custom means superior ease of use, performance, capacity and data integrity. Open and portable, it facilitates plug-and-Play IP as well as standards based PDK, which means one PDK for all tools, added Synopsys' Bal.

The IPL (Interoperable PDK Libraries) is an industry alliance established on April 2007 to collaborate on the creation and promotion of interoperable process design kit (PDK) standards.

Wipro Technologies has been among the early users of the Galaxy Custom Designer. I also managed to speak with Anand Valavi, Group Head, Analog Mixed-Signal Group, Wipro Technologies.

Wipro on Galaxy
Valavi said: "From an EDA tool perspective, in analog mixed-signal (AMS) area, the amount of productivity is a lot less than in the digital area. The per transistor productivity for a digital designer is several magnitudes higher than an analog designer."

The methodology is definitely not as evolved as in the digital area. According to him: 'This productivity will now increase for analog and AMS areas, and people can do a lot more complex designs in a shorter period of time. There has been a lot of integration."

On the salient features or enhancements, he said there have been reasonably good improvement in several areas. One, there is an alternative, now, and that brings a lot of advantages. Two, when you take it down to next level, there are several other technical reasons. Without a doubt, new tools are supporting the shift toward mixed-signal design!

Valavi added that an integrated environment definitely improved the productivity. There are other minor things. When you start using it, there are things that helps technical users, for example, an on-canvas editing. Also, the usage or collaborative results in the iPDK libraries will improve the effectiveness in chips designs that are churned out. "It will surely give people working in analog design area a choice," he noted.

©CIOL Bureau

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