Mentor Graphics Analog FastSPICE Platform Selected By Silicon Labs for IoT IP Verification

Mentor Graphics Corp. announced that Silicon Labs, a leading provider of silicon, software, and solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), has selected the Analog FastSPICE (AFS) Platform for circuit verification and device noise analysis of its complex pre-layout and post-layout analog circuits. Silicon Labs is using AFS to analyze PLLs, data converters, wired and wireless transceivers, and other specialized high performance analog and RF circuits.

“We have stringent circuit verification and noise analysis requirements for our low-power custom analog, RF, and mixed-signal circuits for our IoT SoCs,” said Ramin Poorfard, vice president of technology at Silicon Labs. “We selected the AFS Platform from Mentor Graphics because they are able to fully address our requirements for circuit verification accuracy, performance, simulation time and capacity. Mentor has become a valuable EDA partner, and we continue to work closely with them as we further advance the state-of-the-art in complex, ultra-low-power mixed-signal integrated circuits.”

“AFS device noise analysis delivers silicon-accurate noise analysis for our low-power, high-performance PLL and data converter circuits,” said Ravi Kummaraguntla, IoT design manager at Silicon Labs.  “AFS consistently delivers nanometer SPICE accuracy with superior performance that fully meets our requirements. This capability has allowed us to run more Monte Carlo simulations in a reasonable amount of time, providing us a higher degree of confidence in our designs.”

The AFS Platform provides the world’s fastest circuit verification for nanometer analog, RF, mixed-signal, memory, and custom digital circuits. Foundry certified to 7nm, the AFS Platform delivers nanometer SPICE accuracy five to ten times faster than traditional SPICE and two to six times faster than parallel SPICE simulators. For large circuits the AFS Platform delivers greater than 20M element capacity and the fastest mixed-signal simulation. For memory and other array-based circuits, AFS Mega delivers silicon-accurate simulation with greater than 100M element capacity. For silicon-accurate characterization it includes the industry’s only comprehensive full-spectrum device noise analysis and a high-productivity Analog Characterization Environment product —both of which deliver five to ten times speedup over alternative approaches.

“The close cooperation we have had with Silicon Labs over the past decade has enabled us to develop industry-leading capabilities in the Analog FastSPICE Platform,” said Ravi Subramanian, general manager of Analog Mixed Signal products in the Deep Sub Micron division, Mentor Graphics. “We are pleased to see that Silicon Labs has selected the AFS Platform for its IoT custom analog, RF and mixed-signal verification flows. This selection further validates the value Mentor Graphics offers as an essential partner to leaders in the semiconductor industry.”

Want to know more? Visit www.mentor.com.