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Analog Verification in the Cloud: Benefits and Requirements

Synopsys Editorial Staff

Nov 10, 2022 / 3 min read

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Custom chip designs are increasingly common and can power new fields of technology, such as AI, self-driving automobiles, and 5G. As new custom chips are developed, the need for accurate design verification has also increased. 

On-premises computational capacity for analog design verification is inherently limited. Predicting the necessary computational needs before verification has led design teams to overestimate or underestimate necessary resources. 

Rather than investing in new hardware to meet the evolving computational demands, enterprises can now utilize cloud computing to improve runtimes in analog design verification and other demanding EDA compute tasks.

What is Analog Verification?

Analog verification is the functional verification methodology for analog, mixed-signal, and RF integrated circuits and chips. Because transistor-level simulation is often inadequate for functional verification, engineers build additional models of the analog circuit blocks and use that to verify the design¡ªtypically written in Verilog or Verilog-AMS. 

Utilizing these functional models is not the only aspect of analog design verification, though. A testbench is also required to perform comprehensive self-checking and compare its response against previously written specifications. The testbench is applied to both the model and the transistor-level schematic.

In cases where the model and design pass all tests, the model can be validated as consistent with the design. The design is then verified if it meets the required specifications. 

Validation Requirements for the Next Generation

Ensuring that products behave as intended once released to the market is essential. For this reason, reliability verification is a critical step in the IC design process. Reliability issues ¡ª such as electrostatic discharge (ESD) and latch-up protection ¡ª are increasing in complexity as ICs become more advanced. For this reason, many foundries now provide reliability design rules enabled by EDA companies in the form of reliability verification tools and checks. 

In modern designs, the interaction between analog structures and digital logic is more complex than in the past. Verification methodologies that were adequate in the past (e.g., divide-and-conquer) now require a mixed-signal approach to ensure intended functionality. 

Analog behavior is still captured and simulated within the analog environment. However, with the presence of digital blocks, even the fastest analog circuit solvers cannot prevent bottlenecks in the verification processes. Therefore, it is necessary to quickly model designs with enough accuracy for applications through real number models (RNMs) and assertion-based approaches.

Benefits of the Cloud

IC design verification flows require significant computer time and fluctuating resources. Not every organization can acquire adequate on-site computing resources to maintain their schedule of reliability and verification flows. If they do, the large amount of required hardware can introduce inefficiencies by remaining unused during other phases of the development process. With the help of the cloud, these problems can be addressed.

By leveraging cloud computing resources, enterprises can meet ¡°peak demand¡± periods when validating a full chip through a browser-based SaaS environment. A fully analog design environment with access to tools and a complete end-to-end design flow eliminates the need to maintain on-premises CAD infrastructure. 

Engineers can complete design steps from schematic design to circuit simulation, layout, and verification in a secure cloud environment. Additionally, engineers have access to simulation capabilities through GPU-accelerated and multi-core options. As a result, computational infrastructure and license constraints can be eliminated. Design teams can move between tools seamlessly and scale their usage to fit their design demands. 

Formal chip verification is especially suited to parallel execution. Each assertion can operate reasonably independently, allowing for a group of assertions to be deployed across a series of machines. With cloud-based services, the cost difference between parallel and serial operation disappears. Parallel operation is much faster in wall-clock time, and the cloud enables virtually infinite machine capacity to facilitate parallel operations. Consequently, the cloud is a natural location for the large computational requirements necessary for chip verification. 

Synopsys, EDA, and the Cloud

Synopsys is the industry¡¯s largest provider of electronic design automation (EDA) technology used in the design and verification of semiconductor devices, or chips. With Synopsys Cloud, we¡¯re taking EDA to new heights, combining the availability of advanced compute and storage infrastructure with unlimited access to EDA software licenses on-demand so you can focus on what you do best ¨C designing chips, faster. Delivering cloud-native EDA tools and pre-optimized hardware platforms, an extremely flexible business model, and a modern customer experience, Synopsys has reimagined the future of chip design on the cloud, without disrupting proven workflows.

 

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