Jun 02, 2003
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN), today announced the release of the Cadence(R) Aptivia(R) Parallel Characterization option, enabling customers to easily and cost-effectively slash circuit validation time up to 10x or more. The new option parallelizes Cadence Spectre(R) SPICE simulations to characterize any number of corners and variations. This adds a new performance dimension to Aptivia, which is now also fully integrated with Cadence Virtuoso(R) Schematic Composer and Analog Design Environment.
To ensure high yield while meeting performance targets, design teams must validate their circuits across many process corners and environment variations. This can take many weeks, forcing most designers to either inadequately validate their circuits or slip schedule. Aptivia Parallel Characterization directly addresses this problem by providing easy-to-use automation that parallelizes the validation process -- cutting weeks of runtime to a day or two. Each Aptivia Parallel Characterization option enables designers to parallelize up to four Spectre SPICE simulations, and designers can use any number of options simultaneously.
"Aptivia is providing us a tremendous productivity boost," said Shiro Dosho, Mixed Circuit Design Team Leader, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. "Aptivia's parallel characterization capability alone enables us to shorten circuit validation well over 10x. It also enables us to significantly cut the time it takes to develop new circuits, prepare for design reviews, and reuse existing designs. We are standardizing on the Aptivia environment for all of our circuit design."
Aptivia, the industry's first and only specification-driven circuit design environment, provides automated analysis, characterization and verification. It also uniquely captures the design process as intellectual property (IP), enabling companies to standardize methodologies and best practices across multiple sites. This includes organizing design data for reuse, creating embedded design documentation, and seamlessly sharing design information.
"Aptivia adds a new, high-productivity layer of automation on top of our industry-standard custom design environment," said Yaakov Milstain, corporate vice president and general manager of Custom IC at Cadence. "Aptivia Parallel Characterization is further evidence of our ability to quickly assimilate and leverage acquired technology quickly. Customers worldwide tell us this is the future of custom design."
Pricing and Availability
The Aptivia Parallel Characterization option is available immediate with pricing starting at $50k for a one-year time-based license. Aptivia design environment starts at $30,000 for a one-year time-based license. Aptivia and the Aptivia Parallel Characterization option will be available on the OpenAccess application programming interface (API) and reference database later this year. Cadence is adopting OpenAccess as its common API and unified database.
About Cadence
Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design technologies, methodology services, and design services. Cadence solutions are used to accelerate and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety of other electronics-based products. With approximately 5,200 employees and 2002 revenues of approximately $1.3 billion, Cadence has sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information about the company, its products and services are available at http://www.cadence.com.
For more information, please contact:
Judy Erkanat
Cadence Design Systems
408-894-2302
Cadence, the Cadence logo, Aptivia, Spectre and Virtuoso are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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