Home > Customers Customers   Customers     Downloads     Request Evaluation     Qualcomm Incorporated "Qualcomm is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies.”   Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. "Samsung Electronics is a global leader in semiconductor, telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies."   Masahiko Matsumoto, Director Analogue LSI BU, Semiconductor Company, Panasonic "We spend a significant amount of effort on mixed-signal verification and noise analysis of mixed-signal integrated circuits. After a rigorous evaluation of the AFS Platform on a variety of mixed-signal integrated circuits, we have decided to deploy this platform for mass-production use in Panasonic." Broadcom Corporation "Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications." ST Juang, Senior Director of Design Infrastructure Marketing Division, TSMC "TSMC provides the foundry industry's largest portfolio of process-proven library, IP, design tools and reference flows. We selected Analog FastSPICE for our design teams because it delivered SPICE accurate results five to ten times faster than traditional SPICE on our analog/mixed-signal IP and building blocks across our major process technologies down to 45nm." NXP Semiconductors "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." James C. Kemerling, CTO, Triad Semiconductor. "Triad develops complex analog and mixed-signal designs using via-configurable arrays that present unique circuit verification challenges. With AFS we can perform full-circuit verification of switched capacitor circuits such as delta-sigma modulators and filters which was not practical with our existing tools. AFS has shown as much as 10x performance improvement over traditional SPICE on PLLs and ADCs with nanometer SPICE accuracy.”   Manjunath Bhat, VP of Engineerin, AltaSens  "At AltaSens we have significant circuit verification challenges to deliver CMOS image sensors with the highest image quality along with lower noise and lower power in a cost-effective solution. With the AFS Platform we can run post-layout verification of our high-performance wide-dynamic-range HD CMOS image sensors with nanometer SPICE accuracy. When running AFS single core we get performance on par with our existing parallel simulator running on 8 cores.”   Dr. Yves Geerts, COO, ICsense "At ICsense we design customer-specific ICs for power management, sensor-MEMS-actuator interfaces, and high-voltage circuits across many different technologies and foundries. We adopted the AFS Platform because it has all the required features, accuracy, performance, and reliability across wide variety of products and process technologies. AFS delivered results 2x-5x faster than our existing parallel simulator while maintaining nanometer SPICE accuracy on complex analog blocks including ADCs, DACs, and DC-DC converters .”     Mahesh Tirupattur, Executive Vice president, Analog Bits "We have designed the lowest jitter LC-Tank PLL in the industry, supporting SoC applications requiring over 100 Gbps data transfer rate. Our design is silicon-proven in TSMC’s 40nm G process, and is now moving to 28nm. We used the AFS Platform to perform closed-loop transistor-level PLL characterization including parasitic and device noise effects. We achieved excellent silicon correlation, smashing the original 300-femtosecond goal across broad integration range --- a first for clocking IP.”   Dr. Xingang Wang, Senior Manager, Skyworks Solutions "Analog/RF block characterization in nanometer process technologies is a design limiter demanding increased accuracy, performance, and capacity from circuit simulators. AFS MCP delivers nanometer SPICE accuracy and allows us to characterize our analog/RF blocks up to 50x faster than single-core traditional SPICE simulators." Toshikazu Suzuki, Head Design Technology, Asahi Kasei EMD "Analog FastSPICE meets a critical need for our mixed-signal/RF IC designers- super fast performance combined with true SPICE accuracy- which was impossible with any other simulator. We reduced simulation time for our complex ADCs, integer and fractional PLLs, and transceivers by 5x-10x with true SPICE accuracy. We have been able to easily integrate this into our proprietary design flow, thereby reducing verification times for our engineers developing complex mixed-signal circuits for wireless, consumer, and networking applications." Osamu Kobayashi, Director Mixed-Signal LSI Lab, 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." United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) "UMC is a leading global semiconductor foundry that provides advanced technology and manufacturing services for applications spanning every major sector of the IC industry." Douglas Holberg, Vice President of Technology, Silicon Laboratories Inc. "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." Dr. Kirt Hong, Group Leader of Mixed-Signal Design, System IC Division, LG Electronics, Inc. "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." Keisho Miyazaki, Group Manager, IC Engineering Group, Alps Electric Co. Ltd "We have now deployed the AFS Platform because it improves our designer efficiency and addresses our analog/RF verification needs, including complex- block characterization, device noise analysis, and mixed-signal verification -- all with true SPICE accuracy." Do Yeong Lee, Chief Technology Officer, SiliconFile "We spend a significant amount of effort on block-level verification of our CMOS image sensors. After extensive evaluation, we selected the Analog FastSPICE Platform for complex-block verification of our image sensors because it delivered nanometer SPICE accurate results 5x-10x faster than traditional SPICE simulators."   Daniel Van Blerkom, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, Forza Silicon "The CMOS image sensors we design have tremendous verification challenges. We selected AFS because it can handle verification of our CMOS image sensor ICs with nanometer SPICE accuracy on circuit complexities which were impossible in our current verification flow. At the block-level, AFS delivered identical results to traditional SPICE 20x faster in post-layout characterization." Randy Caplan, President, Silicon Creations "We selected the AFS Platform because it delivers nanometer SPICE accurate results 5x-10x faster than traditional SPICE simulators. Additionally, the full-spectrum device noise analyses demonstrate excellent correlation with measured silicon. AFS completed full-circuit post-layout locking simulations of a complex 28nm fractional PLL in less than 8 hours - over a 10x speedup compared to other simulators. Similar results were achieved for high performance clock-and-data recovery circuits (CDRs) ." Stuart Molin, Chief Technology Officer, IOsemi. "At IOsemi we have tremendous verification and characterization challenges for our ZEROcap™ CMOS technology designs. We have standardized on the Analog FastSPICE Platform because it provides nanometer SPICE accuracy 5x to 10x faster than traditional SPICE, exceeding our requirements for verification and characterization of our high-performance CMOS RF front-end devices." John Ryan, GPS Development and Operation Manager,ST-Ericsson "Analog Fast SPICE delivers 20 times faster simulation speed of our complex blocks and our complete GPS RF front-end compared to the traditional SPICE simulator with identical waveforms, enabling ST-Ericsson to accelerate innovation and time to market for our GPS products." Mark Chen, Manager of the Project Design Department, Sunplus Technology "We have now deployed AFS Transient Noise and AFS RF analysis to solve our device noise analysis challenges. The AFS Platform is the only tool that delivers transistor-level device noise analysis with true SPICE accuracy for our complex analog and mixed-signal designs." Fari Assaderaghi, Ph.D., Vice President of Engineering at SiTime "SiTime requires extremely accurate and rigorous verification for our state-of-the-art MEMS-based silicon timing solutions. The Analog FastSPICE Platform enables us to verify our circuits much more efficiently at the block, complex-block, and full-circuit level—including verifying aspects that were previously impractical or impossible. We successfully used the Analog FastSPICE circuit simulator, AFS Co-Simulation, and the Noise Analysis Option extensively on our most recent design." Silicon Mitus, Inc. "Silicon Mitus, Inc. manufactures and markets TFT LCD notebook & monitor, LCD/AMOLED mobile display, and LED lighting/BLU applications." Kunio Mori, General Manager, Server Systems Division, NEC Electronics (now Renesas) "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." Monika Brogle, Chief Technology Officer, AXSEM "We benchmarked the AFS Platform for our mixed-signal/RF products against various other tools. BDA convinced us with identical results 5x-10x faster than traditional SPICE and at a reasonable cost. Switching to the AFS Platform enables us to verify our circuits much more thoroughly, enhance our design productivity, and create complex products without re-spins. We are committed to delivering RFIC with best in class performance. Berkeley Design Automation is the right tool set to achieve this goal." Edward Youssoufian, Director of RF Engineering, Newport Media, Inc. "At Newport Media we have been using AFS for over two years for verification of our single-chip solutions for mobile TV broadcast and we consistently get 5x-10x faster results than traditional SPICE simulators with identical waveforms and silicon accurate device noise analysis. We standardized on the AFS Platform for analog/RF verification because it delivers >2x improved designer efficiency and addresses all our verification needs, including block-level design characterization, complex-block simulation, silicon-accurate device noise analysis, and full-chip mixed-signal verification -- all with true SPICE accuracy." Dr. Soonwon Hong, Vice President, Technology Leaders & Innovators "Our timing controllers and LCD drivers require full-circuit verification at the transistor-level and device noise analysis with nanometer SPICE accuracy. We selected the AFS Platform because it delivers identical results as traditional SPICE 5x-10x faster without tuning and it provides nanometer SPICE accurate transient noise analysis of our complex mixed-signal designs." Alan Wong, Wireless IC Design Lead, Toumaz Technology Limited "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." MaxRise "MaxRise is a fabless IC company delivering low-cost, low-power silicon solutions serving high-growth consumer and commercial mobile DTV markets." Mansour Keramat, President and CEO, Alvand Technologies, Inc. "Alvand's high-performance, ultra-low-power analog and mixed-signal IP requires stringent and efficient characterization. AFS Nano provides us superior price/performance for block-level design and verification. It consistently delivers true SPICE accurate results up to 10x faster than traditional SPICE on our ADC, DAC, and analog front-end designs." Jun-ichi Okamura, Director Business Unit I, THine Electronics, Inc. "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." Sridhar Kotikalapoodi, Vice President of Design, Summit Microelectronics, Inc. "At Summit we have been using Analog FastSPICE for over one year for transistor level simulation of our programmable, highly integrated precision power management ICs, and we consistently get up to 14x faster results than traditional SPICE simulators with identical waveforms. Now with AFS Nano we get block-level simulation with true SPICE accuracy at a superior price/performance. This makes it compelling even compared to traditional SPICE tools." Raydium Semiconductor Corporation "Raydium Semiconductor Corporation is a global IC solution provider of TFT-LCD panels." RDC Semiconductor Co., Ltd. "RDC Semiconductor Co., Ltd. is the first company in Taiwan to focus on the design and development of IC for high-end, low power 16/32 bit microprocessors." Mike Kappes, President, IQ-Analog "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." ST Microelectronics "STMicroelectronics is a global leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications with innovative semiconductor solutions." Jim Thomas, Corporate VP of Product Development, Spansion, Inc. "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." Tamotsu Hiwatashi, Senior Manager, System LSI Division, Toshiba Corporation "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." Srenik Mehta, Director of Analog Design Engineering, Atheros Communications, Inc. "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." Kim Beumer, Director IC Design, Microtune®, Inc (acquired by Zoran in 2010) "Our design verification flow has to be extremely efficient to maintain our technological leadership in RF silicon solutions for the consumer and automotive electronics markets. With the AFS Platform we are getting up to 5 to 10x faster true SPICE accurate results at the block, complex-block, and full-circuit levels. When running the Analog FastSPICE Platform with co-simulation on our full-circuit we are seeing up to 100x speed-up over traditional SPICE with identical results." David Kang, VP of Engineering, Axiom Microdevices (acquired by Skyworks in 2009) "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." Dr. Mark Dawkins, RF Systems Director, Future Waves (acquired by Toumaz in 2009) "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." Tom Hegedus, Vice President of Engineering, Luminary Micro (acquired by TI in 2009) "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." Cesar Martin-Perez, VP/GM, Analog Business, MIPS (Acquired by Synopsys in 2009) "MIPS Technologies is the leader in analog/mixed-signal IP targeted for advanced connectivity, audio, data conversion, RF and wireless communications, and power management. Our analog/mixed-signal IP design flow requires stringent verification and characterization. Analog FastSPICE provides us true SPICE accurate results significantly faster than traditional SPICE. With this faster turnaround time, our design teams can work much more efficiently, and rigorously characterize even our most complex circuits." Matt Felder, Senior Analog Designer , SigmaTel (Acquired by Freescale in 2008) "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." Abbas El Gamal, Professor of EE and Director, Information Systems Laboratory "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." Ali Niknejad, Assist. Professor of Elec. Engr. and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley "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." 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."                   home | company | products | applications | customers | news & events | support | jobs | contact us | site map   © 2011 Berkeley Design Automation