Boosting Layout Productivity: Unlocking the Power of Virtuoso Studio Features

Our custom IC design solution just got better with the Virtuoso Studio ushering in the future of custom and analog design. Leveraging 30 years of industry experience to provide broader support for RF, photonics, mixed-signal, and advanced heterogeneous designs. The new AI-powered Virtuoso Studio advances productivity via automation and innovative features, reimagined infrastructure, and new levels of integration that stretch beyond classic design boundaries. The Virtuoso Studio offers the same great experience you are accustomed to but with added benefits to support accelerating design complexity.

As the full custom IC layout suite of the industry-leading Cadence Virtuoso Studio, the Virtuoso Layout Suite supports custom analog, digital, RF, and mixed-signal designs at the device, cell, block, and chip levels.

The Virtuoso Layout Suite family of products comprises the layout environment of the industry-standard Virtuoso Studio custom design platform.

In this Knowledge Booster blog, let’s talk about and explore the latest features available in the Virtuoso Studio platform that you can use to enhance your layout design productivity. The blog:

• Introduces the training materials and videos that can help you understand and use these features.
• Shows how to earn a digital badge by passing an exam for the course.

Our new AI-powered custom design solution, Virtuoso Studio, provides innovative features to achieve unrivaled productivity in layout design tasks. You can take advantage of these features to accelerate your custom IC layout implementation.

What’s Next?

As the saying goes, watching this in action might help more than reading about it, so check out our Training Bytes video channel that offers many helpful videos on Diagnostic Center, Schematic Assistant, Group Arrays, Application Readiness Checker, Incremental Check Against Source, Interactive Dummy Instances Backannotation, and Generate All From (GFS) & Update Components and Nets (UCN) – New Pin Table (I/O Pins Tab) in the Virtuoso Studio platform.

All the related videos are linked together in a channel to let you easily access and watch as many videos as you like.

• On the Cadence Learning and Support portal (login required), you can take the free Virtuoso Studio Features online course.
• This course includes videos such as:

What Is the Diagnostic Center?

The Diagnostic Center in the Virtuoso Custom IC design platform is a one-stop shop for self-help and troubleshooting performance issues. It contains many debugging techniques to detect issues that might have caused an application to slow down.

What is the Schematic Assistant?

You can use the Schematic assistant to show the current connectivity reference as displayed in the Virtuoso Schematic Editor.

What Are the Group Arrays?

Certain custom and digital designs, such as those containing memory arrays and routing channels, might require patterns of objects to be repeated across a design. You can use Group Arrays to create such repeated patterns in your designs.

What Is the Application Readiness Checker (ARC)?

The Application Readiness Checker improves the process of checking and updating the layout from the schematic and provides a one-to-one correspondence between the checks and updates. You can choose the checks you want for different applications.

What Is the Incremental Check Against Source (INCAS)?

When the Incremental Check Against Source option is enabled, some of the Check Against Source (CAS) checks will run incrementally. Any change in the layout which makes a difference with the schematic will be reported immediately.

What Is the Interactive Dummy Instances Backannotation?

You can use the Interactive Dummy Instances Backannotation to backannotate the dummy instances to the schematic to keep the schematic and layout views synchronized. You can use the Back Annotate Dummies form to make the dummy instances backannotation interactive and provide full control on where and how to backannotate the dummies to the schematic.

What Is the Generate All From Source (GFS) & Update Components and Nets (UCN) – New Pin Table?

You can use the Generate All From Source (GFS) & Update Components and Nets (UCN) – New Pin Table (I/O Pins Tab) in IC 23.1 which provides a new style table that is more flexible and easily editable.

• You can earn a Digital Badge by passing an exam for the course

Information and FAQs

To find information on how to get an account on the Cadence Learning and Support portal, see the Support page.

To stay up-to-date with the latest news and information about Cadence training and webinars, subscribe to the Cadence Training emails.

If you have questions about courses, schedules, online, public, or live onsite training, reach out to us at Cadence Training.

Related Resources

Training Bytes (Video Channel)

What Is the Diagnostic Center?

What is the Schematic Assistant?

What Are the Group Arrays?

What Is the Application Readiness Checker (ARC)?

What Is the Incremental Check Against Source (INCAS)?

What Is the Interactive Dummy Instances Backannotation?

What Is the Generate All From Source (GFS) & Update Components and Nets (UCN) – New Pin Table?

Online Courses

Virtuoso® Layout Onboarding

Virtuoso Layout Pro: T6 Constraint-Driven Flow and Power Routing

Virtuoso Layout Pro: T7 Module Generator and Floorplanner

Virtuoso Layout Pro: T8 Virtuoso Concurrent Layout Editing

Virtuoso Layout Pro: T9 Virtuoso Design Planner

Blogs

Knowledge Booster Training Bytes - Enhance Layout Productivity with Virtuoso CLE

Knowledge Booster Training Bytes — Virtuoso CLE Webinar Recording Available

Knowledge Booster Training Bytes — Virtuoso Layout Pro Webinar Recording Available

Rapid Adoption Kits

Application Readiness Checker (ARC)

Virtuoso layout (EXL) for Photonics Designers

Virtuoso Concurrent Layout Editing

User Guides

Virtuoso Studio What's New

Virtuoso Studio Design Environment User Guide

Virtuoso Layout Suite XL: Basic Editing User Guide

Virtuoso Layout Suite XL: Connectivity Driven Editing User Guide

Virtuoso Layout Suite SKILL Reference

Contact Us

For any questions, general feedback, or even if you want to suggest a future blog topic, write to custom_ic_blogs@cadence.com .

About Knowledge Booster Training Bytes

Knowledge Booster Training Bytes is an online journal that relays information about Cadence Training videos, online courses, and upcoming webinars that are available in the Learning section of the Cadence Learning and Support portal. This blog category brings you direct links to these videos, courses, and other related material on a regular basis. Subscribe to receive email notifications about our latest Custom IC Design blog posts.

Baby Ravi

On behalf of the Cadence Training team