Toshiba to adopt mixed-level IC simulator

Toshiba has selected the Mentor Graphics Advance MST tool for use in its IC design flow.

Toshiba has selected the Mentor Graphics Advance MST (ADMS) tool, the industry's leading mixed-signal, mixed-level integrated circuit (IC) simulator, for use in its IC design flow.

Toshiba will use ADMS for its mixed digital-analogue CMOS and Bi-CMOS SoC designs.

"In the development of mixed digital-analogue custom SoCs for consumer and industry application, system complexity and sophistication has increased while the development timeline has shortened.

This makes fast and efficient mixed-signal simulation a key to success.

Compared with traditional analogue/mixed-signal (AMS) tools, ADMS reduces simulation time drastically, enables more detailed simulation within the assigned timetable and improves design quality dramatically.

We plan to adopt ADMS for more complicated higher-level simulation", commented Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, Chief Specialist of Analog and Peripheral Division, Toshiba Semiconductor.

"We expect using ADMS to provide a new methodology, not just a replacement of Toshiba's existing AMS solution.

With the availability of Mach and CommLib/BMC, ADMS provides rapid simulation and calibration of language models", said Takao Yoshimoto, specialist of Toshiba Microelectronics.

ADMS uses a single kernel engine that combines the industry-leading ModelSim VHDL/Verilog simulator, AMS HDL language in VHDL-AMS and Verilog-AMS, and Eldo, a transistor-level simulator.

With its single kernel engine, ADMS resolves the bottleneck issues of backplane type simulators, and reduces simulation time considerably through sophisticated time step control in the analogue area.

In addition, by combining this functionality with Mach for fast, transistor-level simulation, Eldo RF for modulated steady-state simulation and the CommLib/BMC library, which can be calibrated with Spice, ADMS is the fastest, most accurate mixed-signal simulator for all types of designs.

"In response to the trend of increasing mixed-signal SoC, many IC design companies are revisiting their design methodology.

With the adoption of ADMS by the leading IC companies like Toshiba, it further confirms that ADMS has gained world wide acceptance as the best tool for mixed-signal SoC design verification", said Jue-Hsien Chern, Vice President, Deep Submicron (DSM) Division, Mentor Graphics.

ADMS is available on Solaris, HPUX, and Linux.

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