How Much Do You Know About Virtuoso Studio?

How much do you know about Virtuoso Studio? Here are the answers to the True or False questions we’re listing each week on Cadence social media channels. Watch for a new question every Friday in 2023.

Learn more about Virtuoso Studio’s advantages. Cadence Virtuoso Studio is our next-generation custom design platform delivering an optimal design experience that meets today's and future custom analog design needs.

Week 20: September 15, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio promotes collaboration among team members. 

Answer: True

With the power of design intents, Virtuoso Studio enables close collaboration between schematic and layout designers. Read more about Virtuoso Studio.

Week 19: September 8, 2023

Question: In-design physical verification checks in Virtuoso Layout Suite are not signoff quality.

Answer: False

Virtuoso Studio offers integration of Pegasus Physical Verification Solution into the Virtuoso Layout Suite to provide signoff quality design rule checks in-design during layout construction. Learn more about the enhanced Virtuoso Layout Suite.

Week 18: September 1, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio allows access to more than 40 third-party EDA companies.

Answer: False

Well, trick question. The answer is more than 50 large and small third-party vendors have integrated solutions into the Virtuoso Studio, allowing our mutual customers unprecedented flexibility. Learn more about Cadence Connections.

Week 17: August 25, 2023

Question: Using Virtuoso ADE Suite limits my simulation choices.

Answer: False

The full complement of simulation technologies with the Spectre Simulation Platform is well integrated into Virtuoso ADE Suite, allowing analog, RF, mixed-signal, photonics, and advanced nodes to be analyzed efficiently. Read more about our simulation capabilities. 

Week 16: August 18, 2023

Question: Foundry-supported generative AI design migration solutions ease the burden of process migration for schematics and layouts. 

Answer: True

With advanced automation for custom design and implementation, Virtuoso Studio pioneers the next era of automation tools that cater to the varied custom IC design and layout migration flows. Read more about custom design migration. 

Week 15: August 11, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio enhances the software infrastructure with improved multi-threading and efficient parallel processing.

Answer: True

To strengthen the core, this enhanced software infrastructure helps layout navigation and lets you build faster and smarter features that perform better than manually drawing the layout. Watch this video to learn more. 

Week 14: August 4, 2023

Question: It is difficult to move from one process node to another in Virtuoso Studio.

Answer: False

With advanced automation for custom design and implementation, Cadence Virtuoso Studio ushers in the next era of automation tools that caters to varied custom IC design and layout migration flows. Read more about custom design migration. 

Week 13: July 28, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio helps you meet heterogeneous design challenges such as multi-fabric co-analysis of electrical, EM, and photonic signals.

Answer: True

Numerous advances in Cadence Virtuoso Studio allow designers to meet heterogeneous design challenges, such as multi-fabric co-analysis of electrical, electromagnetic (EM), and photonic signals, as well as system-level integration and verification, including power and thermal analysis. Read more about Virtuoso Custom Heterogeneous Integration. 

Week 12: July 21, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio provides methodologies to tackle advanced process-node complexities.

Answer: True

The Virtuoso advanced-node platform improves individual point tools to handle these challenges, as well as enables new design methodologies that allow for rapid layout prototyping, in-design signoff, and close collaboration between schematic and layout designers—essential to designing efficiently at advanced-process nodes. Read more about Cadence Custom Advanced Node. 

Week 11: July 14, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio is a group of discrete tools under one umbrella portfolio.

Answer: False

Virtuoso Studio offers a well-integrated hub of proven Cadence solutions trusted by leading customers and foundries. Read more about Virtuoso Studio. 

Week 10: July 7, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio includes an electronic/photonic design automation (EPDA) environment that supports monolithic and hybrid approaches with a comprehensive EPDA flow.

Answer: True

Built upon the Virtuoso Studio, the electronic/photonic design automation (EPDA) environment supports monolithic (single chip with both electronic and photonic components) and hybrid (3D-IC stacks with a traditional electronics IC on top of a photonics IC) approaches. The comprehensive EPDA flow provides schematic capture, circuit simulation, and schematic-driven layout implementation as well as support for complex photonic SKILL PCells and advanced photonic layout generators. It also provides co-design of the electronic and photonic components for hybrid systems. Read more about the Cadence Photonics solution. 

Week 9: June 30, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio offers high-quality automated place and route technologies for quick turnaround time.

Answer: True

The Cadence Virtuoso Layout Suite, part of Virtuoso Studio, provides an integrated place-and-route (P&R) solution that cuts down custom layout implementation from days to minutes. Watch a video and learn more about automated custom layout implementation. 

Week 8: June 23, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio’s assisted layout automation does not give you control to create layouts. 

Answer: False

Creating customized device array placement using modulator generators (ModGens), smart snapping of instances to grids, and simulation-driven routing are examples of assisted layout automation that power your interactive layout creation. Read more about the three layers of increasing layout automation and design productivity in Virtuoso Layout Suite.

Week 7: June 16, 2023

Question: You can explore and debug worst-case design failures to avoid expensive design rework by meeting 3- to 6+ sigma yield requirements.

Answer: True

Cadence Spectre FMC Analysis enables fast and comprehensive design space exploration using Monte Carlo simulations of complex I/O, analog mixed-signal and RF blocks, memories, and bit and standard cells while maintaining necessary statistical accuracy. Read more about Spectre FMC Analysis.

Week 6: June 9, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio does not support cloud-ready solutions.

Answer: False

Virtuoso Studio provides massively scalable, cloud-ready solutions for when 100s of simulations turn into 1,000s. The modernized Virtuoso ADE Suite infrastructure enables it to run 10,000s of simulations on cloud servers, ensuring stability and offering new ease-of-use features that bring innovation to life. Read more about Virtuoso Studio. 

Week 5: June 2, 2023

Question: Virtuoso ADE Suite's AI-enabled tools learn and improve next-generation custom/analog designs.

Answer: True

Virtuoso Studio offers smart tools for recentering IP to new design specifications with higher yields. Read more about the enhanced Virtuoso ADE Suite. 

Week 4: May 19, 2023

Question: Cadence's integrated place and route (P&R) reduces custom layout implementation from days to minutes through enhanced P&R automation engines.

Answer: True

With the automation engines connected through the unified, easy-to-use interface in the familiar Virtuoso Layout Suite, you can build a seamless P&R flow according to your design needs to achieve the best-quality results and accelerate time to results. Read more about integrated place and route. 

Week 3: May 12, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio allows heterogenous integration of 2.5D or 3D designs for RF and photonics systems.

Answer: True

Numerous advances in Virtuoso Studio allow designers to meet heterogeneous design challenges like multi-fabric co-analysis of electrical, electromagnetic (EM), and photonic signals, as system-level integration and verification, including power and thermal analysis. Read more about heterogeneous design. 

Week 2: May 5, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio cannot support proprietary company tools.

Answer: False

Virtuoso Studio has multiple methods to integrate your personal tools into its standard flows so you can take advantage of your own software genius.  Read more about Virtuoso Studio. 

Week 1: April 28, 2023

Question: Virtuoso Studio is only good for analog design. 

Answer: False

Virtuoso Studio is good for all types of custom designs, and with the support of heterogeneous designs, it can be the starting place for your package and board design needs as well.  Read more about Virtuoso Studio.