Gets closer to first-time-right analog design by integrating advanced EDA features in design flow to increase design productivity, reduce time to market and design costs

ERFURT, Germany — (BUSINESS WIRE) — June 27, 2013 — Leading analog/mixed-signal foundry supplier X-FAB Silicon Foundries today announced its new A/MS Reference Kit supporting advanced methodology for analog/mixed-signal design. The Kit enables rapid adoption of constraint-driven design, mixed-signal simulation, floorplanning, schematic-driven layout, automated routing, timing-driven digital block implementation and signoff. It is entirely based on the latest mixed-signal flow from Cadence Design Systems, Inc., a leader in global design innovation.

The Kit includes an OpenAccess PDK to enable mixed-signal designs for 180nm and other technologies, a reference design, flow scripts and detail documentation for easy setup and fast adoption. It demonstrates how advanced Cadence^® tools integrated in the design flow help increase design productivity, shorten time to market, improve quality of silicon, and reduce the overall design costs.

“The new A/MS Reference Kit is a result of our close technical collaboration with X-FAB,” said Chi-Ping Hsu, senior vice president, Research and Development, Silicon Realization Group at Cadence. “The Kit offers our mutual customers advanced methodology based on the latest integrated mixed-signal flow for improved productivity and lower design cost in designing high quality products.”

Thomas Ramsch, Director Design Support at X-FAB, said, “Today’s tight project schedules and time-to-market constraints require the best use of available EDA tools, and more automation for all design tasks. Cadence is at the forefront of EDA development and provides advanced features and flows for high automation throughout the design flow. Designers who adopt X-FAB’s mixed-signal flow with Cadence Virtuoso^® XL and GXL features, and Cadence Encounter^® Digital Implementation System integrated on OpenAccess, gain significant advantage by accelerating the design process.”

Comprehensive A/MS Reference Kit

The A/MS Reference Kit covers a vast majority of Cadence design tools and flows, focusing on rapid analog prototyping and analog layout automation, full-chip A/MS simulation, analog-on-top mixed-signal implementation, automated custom routing, and digital block implementation. This comprehensive solution for achieving highest-quality A/MS designs offers full interoperability between the analog Virtuoso and Encounter Digital Implementation system, and consistent analog and digital implementation based on OpenAccess and mixed-signal-enabled PDK.

Availability

The new A/MS Reference Kit is available from X-FAB now. For more information please contact Email Contact.

About X-FAB

X-FAB is the leading analog/mixed-signal foundry group manufacturing silicon wafers for analog-digital integrated circuits (mixed-signal ICs). X-FAB maintains wafer production facilities in Erfurt, Dresden and Itzehohe (Germany); Lubbock, Texas (U.S.); and Kuching, Sarawak (Malaysia); and employs approximately 2,400 people worldwide. Wafers are manufactured based on advanced modular CMOS, BiCMOS and MEMS processes with technologies ranging from 1.0 to 0.13 micrometers, for applications primarily in the automotive, communications, consumer and industrial sectors. For more information, please visit www.xfab.com.

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