Synopsys helps Nationz achieve first-pass silicon success

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Synopsys Inc. announced that Nationz Technologies Inc. has successfully achieved first-pass silicon success of a 2.5-gigahertz (GHz), 126-channel RF transceiver system-on-chip (SoC) design by using Synopsys' CustomSim mixed-signal and VCS functional verification solutions, part of Synopsys' Discovery Verification Platform.

These Synopsys tools delivered accurate and high-performance transient analysis of the power-up operation to within five percent of the actual silicon with 10x speed-up over Nationz' previous tools for full-chip functional simulation. Having these capabilities shortened Nationz' design cycle by more than two months and enabled first-pass silicon success.

"The combination of CustomSim and VCS allowed us to shorten our design cycle while delivering silicon-accurate results," said Meiyun Li, chief technology officer of Nationz Technologies, Inc. "The CustomSim mixed-signal solution delivered better silicon correlation, performance and ease-of-use over other competitive tools, which was critical in enabling us to achieve first silicon success on a recent RF SoC design."

To adequately verify complex mixed-signal designs, a solution must have the performance and accuracy needed to efficiently simulate digitally-controlled analog functions such as RF transceivers, phase-locked-loops (PLLs) and Sigma Delta Converters. CustomSim addresses these challenges with best-in-class NanoSim, HSIM and XA simulation technologies featuring added multicore processing capabilities for high-capacity, high-performance circuit simulation.

For full-chip verification, the CustomSim solution is tightly coupled to the VCS functional verification solution through direct kernel integration. The combined solution provides a unified analog/mixed-signal (AMS) verification environment that simplifies usability through a common set of inputs, outputs and device models.

"The combined CustomSim and VCS mixed-signal solution has been widely deployed at major IC companies to verify complex mixed-signal SoC designs," said Farhad Hayat, senior director of analog/mixed-signal marketing at Synopsys. "As analog content of SoCs continues to rise, more companies like Nationz Technologies are adopting Synopsys' solutions to address their toughest mixed-signal verification tasks."