Cadence software validated on STARC QA database

SAN JOSE, USA: Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Semiconductor Technology and Academic Research Center (STARC), the Japan semiconductor industry consortium, have revealed an ongoing collaboration to leverage STARC’s regression suites to ensure the high quality of electronic design automation (EDA) software for advanced chip design.

The regression suites and validation flow were developed by STARC and its member companies to qualify EDA software for use by consortium members.

Already facing tremendous pressure to create new, extremely complex semiconductor designs under tight deadline, today’s design engineers demand the highest possible level of confidence in their design software. As part of its mission to assist member companies in evaluating and building their design flows, STARC has developed the validation methodology to test new design software before its members embark on advanced projects.

“One of our most important missions is to help our members ensure the quality and accuracy of their chip design software,” said Nobuyuki Nishiguchi, vice president and general manager, Development Department 1 at STARC. “This methodology allows us to accomplish our mission using tests developed by STARC and the members themselves, thereby ensuring the maximum fit with their requirements.”

Using common test suites developed and consolidated by STARC, the methodology includes regression tests for large designs to quickly identify differences between new versions of tools. Test results are stored in STARC’s quality assurance database (QA database) and reports are sent to STARC member companies. This process helps designers to quickly build quality flows that are appropriate to their needs.

The system currently covers Cadence Conformal Constraint Designer and Encounter Timing System, Encounter Digital Implementation System’s Statistical Static Timing Analysis (SSTA) and Encounter RTL Compiler.

“Mission critical software quality continues to be our number one priority. We're pleased to work with STARC on the software validation flow with real customer designs,” said Dr. Chi-Ping Hsu, senior vice president of research and development in the Implementation Group at Cadence. “This collaboration uniquely positions Cadence as the industry leader in quality focus, and ensures that validation and test results are meeting designers’ requirements.”