Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Berkeley Design Automation | Subject: Noise Analysis Option
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 01 May 2008
Software provides transistor-level noise
analysis
Noise Analysis Option provides transistor-level noise analysis, including analysis of the impact of white and flicker noise, with true Spice accuracy for every type of circuit.
Berkeley Design Automation has released a noise analysis tool for complex analogue and RF circuits Noise Analysis Option handles every type of complex analogue and RF circuit, including all analogue-to-digital convertors (ADCs), phase-locked loops (PLLs), DC/DC convertors, frequency synthesisers and voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs)
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 17 Jan 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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Using its FastSpice and RF FastSpice technology, the Noise Analysis Option is fully compatible with existing flows, produces true Spice accurate results and is already silicon-proven.
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Until now, it has been either impractical or impossible to perform transistor-level analysis of the impact of device noise for many complex analogue and RF circuits including sigma-delta ADCs, video DACs, fractional-N PLLs, frequency synthesisers and wideband VCOs.
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Design teams have had to rely on hand calculations, system-level models, or costly silicon measurements.
With the introduction of the Noise Analysis Option, Berkeley Design Automation is the first company to provide transistor-level noise analysis, including analysis of the impact of white and flicker noise, with true Spice accuracy for every type of circuit.
More than a dozen Berkeley Design Automation customers worldwide are already using the tool on production circuits.
"Device-noise-related issues have a critical impact on the design our high-performance nanometer analogue/RF and mixed-signal circuits", said Osamu Kobayashi, Director Mixed-Signal LSI Lab, System LSI Development Laboratories, Fujitsu Laboratories .
"The Noise Analysis Option gives us true Spice accurate ADC and PLL noise analysis formidably faster than traditional Spice transient simulations that do not even include device noise on Fujitsu Laboratories circuits".
"It is the only tool we know that is able to deliver true Spice accurate transistor-level noise analysis for our complex mixed-signal circuits".
The Noise Analysis Option allows transient-noise analysis five to 10 times faster and with five to ten times higher capacity than any other tool.
It also offers eriodic steady-state (PSS) convergence with up to 50,000 element capacity, and periodic noise analysis that has no accuracy/performance tradeoff and is five to 10 times faster than any other tool for complex circuits.
Oscillator phase noise analysis that delivers unmatched accuracy on autonomous circuits, provides node and device noise contribution and automatically provides impulse sensitivity function (ISF) information for every node.
The tool reads standard Cadence Spectre and Synopsys HSpice netlists and models.
It is fully integrated into the Cadence Virtuoso analogue design environment and can operate from a command line.
It produces standard output formats and includes sophisticated post processing.
"We design highly complex, ultra-low power RF/analogue and mixed-signal SoCs for biomedical applications", said Alan Wong, Wireless IC Design Lead at Toumaz Technology.
"We have significant challenges getting accurate noise analysis results with traditional RF analysis tools".
"Noise Analysis Option allows us to quickly analyse our oscillator and periodic blocks giving typically five times speedup for no loss in accuracy, when compared to our existing methods".
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