Custom circuit porting capability available with AgO’s AnXplorer 2011.02

SANTA CLARA, USA: AgO Inc., a technology leader in analog and RF circuit optimization software, extends its AnXplorer analog design optimisation tool with a new porting capability. The new feature, available in the 2011.02 release, improves the productivity of designers who wish to port an existing custom circuit to a similar technology.

IC design teams often need to re-target their designs to a new technology either to get a second source or, for example, to move from a technology with one-time programmable memories to flash memories. Re-targeting logic has been a straightforward task for many years, while porting analog cells has been more technically challenging. It is necessary to re-size devices in analog circuits and to re-center the circuit to ensure good yield with the new technology. Both tasks, when done manually, are tedious and labour-intensive.

Hillol Sarkar, CEO of AgO Inc says: “AnXplorer 2011.02 brings a ’single click solution’ for porting analog circuits between similar technologies”. The optimizer starts with the device sizes used in the initial process then finds a new design point in the target process. This point can then be used to begin the centering using all process, voltage and temperature corners with the new process."

AnXplorer can fit into commonly used design toolsets as it works with industry standard SPICE netlists and simulators. A designer can define an unsized circuit, with design variables, constraints and objectives. AnXplorer will then generate an optimized, centered circuit that meets or exceeds the design objectives across all corners specified by the user. It is based on a new multi-algorithmic optimization strategy based on a genetic algorithm.