interesting news and it doesn't look like assensio was able to kill this one - seems they're progressing!
Avant! Introduces Star-MS
Revolutionary New Tool Verifies Multi-Million Gate and Multi-Million
Transistor System-on-Chip Designs
Architecture Offers 100-Fold Boost in Performance and Capacity
FREMONT, Calif., March 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Avant! (Nasdaq: AVNT) today announced the release of Star-MS (mixed signal), a new, highly accurate, high-performance simulation system to verify multi-million gate and multi-million transistor system-on-chip (SOC) integrated circuits.
Star-MS significantly improves the design of electronic components that require critical, mixed-signal functionality. Star-MS is targeted for use in a wide variety of industries, including consumer electronics, telecommunications and automotive.
Integrated circuit manufacturers have been closely watching the development of mixed signal technology. "Today's market pressures demand that our designs work right the first time," said John Szetela, CAD system manager at Advanced Micro Devices. "Star-MS provides the capacity and performance we need to efficiently verify large custom analog blocks in the context of the full chip and avoid costly errors at the interfaces."
To overcome the challenges of analyzing mixed signal designs, Star-MS builds upon proven Star-Sim analog and Polaris Verilog simulation technology through a unique single-kernel architecture. This architecture makes Star-MS fast, easy to set-up and use, and greatly improves the accuracy required for SOC designs. A unique table-driven analog modeling process overcomes SPICE limitations. As a result, performance improves from 10 to 1000 times with an analog capacity of five million transistors and multi-million digital gates. Total performance and capacity are increased 100 fold over existing mixed-signal solutions.
"Mixed-signal design is extremely difficult, and it is imperative to have the analog aspects of its simulation handled by the HSPICE reliable industry standard," said Dr. Ron Rohrer, venture partner at InterSouth Partners. "Combining Star-Sim's reliability with the efficiency gained from Polaris simulation of digital portions of the design makes for Star-MS's unbeatable combination of accuracy, efficiency and reliability."
Star-MS leverages Avant!'s technology-CAD modeling accuracy to penetrate the rapidly growing analog/mixed signal market. According to the "Electronic Design Automation Consortium Second Quarter Report," the analog /mixed signal segment was one of the fastest growing EDA segments, with a 42.6 percent year-to-year growth rate through the second quarter of 1998.
"The market for analog and mixed-signal simulation is one of the fastest-growing EDA subapplications," said Rita Glover, principal analyst at EDA Today, L.C. "We are forecasting this sector to grow by 28 percent to reach a total of $282 million worldwide in 1999."
"Full-chip verification of SOC designs that include mixed signal functions has become mandatory as design complexity increases and more designers bring analog signal conditioning and control into system-on-chip designs," said Dr. Chi-Ping Hsu, CEO Staff of Products at Avant!. "Rather than merely 'glue' an analog simulator to a digital simulator, Avant! significantly enhanced and merged the Star-Sim high-capacity circuit simulation and Polaris compiled-code high-speed logic simulation technologies into a single kernel. This allows designers to quickly and accurately characterize these difficult analog/digital circuit interactions on an entire chip."
Star-MS: Quantum leap in mixed signal accuracy
Star-MS benefits include accuracy within 5 percent of SPICE, ease of setup and use, and superior convergence. The single-kernel implementation eliminates operating system overhead and provides accurate interface signal modeling, including switching threshold, interconnect parasitics and drive strength. The proprietary compiled-code technology provides performance 10 to 30 times faster than interpreted Verilog for faster results on increasingly complex circuits. This important verification tool for SOC designs complements Avant!'s SinglePass Design Methodology.
Star-MS: Improvements in set up and ease of use
Previous efforts to combine analog and digital simulation have resulted in simulation tools that are difficult for designers to set-up and use, lack accuracy in the interface between analog and digital models, and have insufficient performance and capacity for today's multi-million transistor circuits. Star-MS allows easy setup and use standard netlist formats (Verilog and Spice) without modification. Star-MS is shipping today. The product includes fully functional analog and digital simulation capabilities.
About Avant!
Avant! (pronounced ah VAHN tee) Corporation develops, markets, and supports integrated circuit design automation (ICDA) software for the design of deep submicron ICs including microprocessors, microcontrollers, application-specific standard products (ASSPs) and complex application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Avant!'s full tool suite covers process characterization, circuit simulation and analysis, HDL simulation, formal verification, floorplanning, physical design and VDSM optimization, interconnect parasitic extraction, timing simulation, and physical verification. Avant! also provides physical foundation IP libraries for integrated circuit design. Avant!'s tools support hierarchical design methodologies as well as incremental design changes in all phases, and they offer the capacity needed for multi-million transistor devices.
Avant! is headquartered in Fremont, California with offices worldwide. Tel 510-413-8000, Fax 510-413-8080 www.avanticorp.com. |
