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  • Magma DA RSS Feed

    by Published on 04-18-2012 12:06 PM
    1. Categories:
    2. EDA,
    3. Synopsys,
    4. Magma
    content/attachments/3423-traditional-analog-design-methodology.jpg

    Gim Tan at Magma did a webinar on analog circuit optimization, so I watched it today to see what I could learn about their approach. Gim is a Staff AE, so not much marketing fluff to wade through in this webinar.

    The old way of designing custom analog circuits involves many tedious and error prone iterations between front-end (Schematic Capture, circuit simulation) and back-end (layout, DRC/LVS, extraction):


    The Maga-based custom IC design flow uses:
    • Model-based cells called FlexCells in Titan ADX:
    • Circuit simulator, FineSim SPICE
    • Floorplan, Titan AVP
    • Automated routing,
    ...
    by Published on 02-17-2012 03:06 PM
    1. Categories:
    2. EDA,
    3. Magma
    content/attachments/2883-muneda-gmbh.jpeg

    How do I know if an AMS block is tuned for the process and will perform and yield acceptably?
    ...
    by Published on 02-07-2012 12:00 PM
    content/attachments/2816-fine2.jpg

    FineSim is Magma's circuit simulator that has been doing extraordinarily well. In my opinion it is one of the big reasons that Synopsys is acquiring (presumably, still subject to approval of course) Magma. FineSim is especially strong in the memory market with over 70% of the top 5 DRAM manufacturers and the top 10 flash manufacturers using ...
    by Published on 01-06-2012 10:32 AM
    1. Categories:
    2. EDA,
    3. Magma
    content/attachments/2504-mo-tamjidi.jpeg

    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.

    ...
    by Published on 12-08-2011 01:11 PM
    content/attachments/2380-cup.jpg

    In one of those wonderfully timed coincidences, yesterday eSilicon had their partner appreciation event yesterday. They awarded the 2011 supplier of the year award to...Magma. They have been using Magma tools for almost ten years.
    ...
    by Published on 11-30-2011 02:41 PM
    content/attachments/2332-smag.jpg

    So Synopsys announced today that it has signed an agreement to acquire Magma. There will be a regulatory delay etc before it finally closes.

    So why did they do it? Despite Magma ...
    by Published on 11-11-2011 09:36 AM
    1. Categories:
    2. EDA,
    3. Magma
    content/attachments/2192-finesim.jpg

    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 ...
    by Published on 09-27-2011 12:31 PM
    content/attachments/1927-essoc.jpg

    I was at the first half of Magma's Silicon One event yesterday. The first keynote was by Rajeev about the environment for SoC designs, especially fabless startups, and Magma's role going forward. More about that later. The other keynote was Jack Harding, CEO of eSilicon. As usual Jack did his presentation without any powerpoint slides, something I find very difficult to do without losing my thread. ...
    by Published on 09-19-2011 12:35 PM
    content/attachments/1879-titanadxflow.gif

    AMS design flows can follow a traditional path or consider trying something new. The traditional path goes along the following steps:
    1. Design requirements
    2. Try a transistor-level schematic
    3. Run circuit simulation
    4. Compare the simulated results versus the requirements, re-size the transistors and go back to step 3 or 2
    5. Create an IC layout
    6. Extract parasitics, re-run circuit simulation
    7. Compare the simulated results versus the requirements, re-size the transistors
    ...
    by Published on 09-15-2011 02:59 PM
    content/attachments/1868-bishop.jpg

    Earlier in the week I met with Phil Bishop, who is the corporate VP of worldwide marketing at Magma.

    I started by asking him where he came from. He originally started as a designer at Motorola in microprocessors and microcontrollers. Then he moved to Silicon Compiler Systems (remember them?) who ended up being acquired by Mentor. He stayed at Mentor for twelve years and ended up as VP of consulting with ...

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