STMicroelectronics standardises on Mentor

STMicroelectronics has standardised on a mixed-signal design methodology based on the Mentor Graphics ADVance MS, ModelSim, Eldo RF and Mach TA tools.

STMicroelectronics has standardised on a mixed-signal design methodology based on the Mentor Graphics ADVance MS, ModelSim, Eldo RF and Mach TA tools.

ST will make its proprietary VHDL-AMS models and libraries available to customers who use the Mentor Graphics toolset.

The ADVance MS language-neutral mixed-signal simulator is the heart of the methodology.

It supports VHDL-AMS, Verilog-AMS, VHDL, Verilog, C, Spice and accelerated transistor-level simulation in a single simulation environment.

ModelSim, Mach TA and Eldo technologies are tightly integrated within ADVance MS.

A choice of design languages and simulation engines in a unified environment is very advantageous as it eliminates miscommunication between design engineers, encourages architecture experimentation, simplifies late stage changes, enables full chip verification and facilitates design reuse.

"A robust simulation methodology for analogue/mixed-signal SoC, one of the competitive advantages of STMicroelectronics, has been proven on several designs, such as hard disk drive read/write channel or power management chips in both BICMOS 0.25 um and CMOS 0.18 um", said Phillippe Magarshack, Central R and D group vice president for Design Automation at STMicroelectronics.

"This approach uses the capability of mixing different levels of abstraction and accuracy (from transistor to behavioral), for analogue and digital, supported by the ADVance MS tool suite of Mentor Graphics.

The high-level of abstraction languages for models is also suitable for the IP exchange between ST design centers and their user communities".

"Today, many IC designs are extremely complex and contain a higher degree of digital and analog interaction", said Jue-Hsien Chern, vice president and general manager for the Deep Submicron (DSM) division of Mentor Graphics.

"Our AMS tool suite offers unprecedented flexibility, making any combination of top-down and bottom-up design possible for AMS SoC.

In fact, it's the only tool suite on the market that offers such versatility and performance".

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