How do I know if an AMS block is tuned for the process and will perform and yield acceptably?
...

Mo Tamjidi founded two Semiconductor IP companies Virage Logic and Dolphin Technology. After reading a press release about how Dolphin Technology is using FineSIM SPICE from Magma I decided to contact him and learn more about why they are now using that circuit simulator in the design of their memory, standard cells, and IO cells.

...

All four of the public EDA companies offer SPICE circuit simulation tools for use by IC designers at the transistor-level, and Magma has been offering two SPICE circuit simulators:

• FineSIM SPICE (parallel SPICE)
• FineSIM PRO (accelerated, parallel SPICE)

An early advantage offered by Magma was a SPICE simulator that could be run in parallel on multiple CPUs. The SPICE competitors have all now followed ...

Intro
John and Ralph from Magma gave me an update on QuickCap at DAC on Monday afternoon in their demo suite.


Notes
John Schritz – Sr AE
Ralph Iverson, Ph. D. (wrote QuickCap)

John Schritz
- Digital Signoff, extraction
- QCP: 2.5D RC for full ASIC designs
- QuickCAP NX: 3D field solver
- QCP:

Demo – 1.5 million instance design, 1.59 million nets, fully P&R, three libraries
- QCP: Gate Level (Star RC competitor)
- QuickCapNX: 3D field solver (Raphael competitor)
- QCP TX: Transistor Level (RC XT ...

At DAC I spent time in the Magma FineSIM demo suite on Monday morning.

Greg Curtis – Product Director, Custom Design Business Unit

- Talus for Digital Design
- FineSim does: SPICE, FastSPICE, Characterization
- Flows Demoed at DAC: High Performance Core, SOC, ASIC/ASSP, AMS, Memory
- What’s New in FineSim?- ADC design trends ...

The big EDA news last week of course was the CNBC interview (HERE) with infamous corporate raider Carl Icahn. Carl is not happy with Mentor Executives, nor is Mentor investor Donald Drapkin who said, and I quote, "It's just a sleepy company run like a country club”. Carl and Donald’s combined MENT investment ...