Virtuoso Meets Maxwell: Get Connected!

'Virtuoso Meets Maxwell' is a blog series aimed at exploring the capabilities and potential of Virtuoso® RF Solution and Virtuoso MultiTech. So, how does Virtuoso meet Maxwell? Now, Virtuoso platform supports RF designs, and the RF designers measure the physical and radiation effects by using the Maxwell's equations. In addition to providing insights into the useful software enhancements, this series broadcasts the voices of different bloggers and experts about their knowledge and experience of various tools in the Virtuoso IC-Packaging world along with the nuances of RF, microwave, and high frequency designs. Watch out for our posts on Mondays.

One of the strengths of the Virtuoso RF solution is the ability to handle connectivity across multiple fabrics. We have recently extended some the IC tools you already know and have used. They now comprehend connectivity across a multi-fabric system. You can trace a physical net from the package into the ICs that it hosts, and use connectivity checking to ensure your system layout’s nets match your schematic.

Edit-in-Concert

The first step is to open your design using Edit-in-Concert.  In this mode, the Virtuoso RF Solution connects all the components in the design through the bumps you identified using the die export feature. You can refer to my previous blog entry, Bumps, Bumps… Where Are My Bumps? for more on that process.

In Edit-in-Concert, each fabric in your design gets its own tab, and that tab shows the fabric—oriented natively—in the context of the system. The following image shows the MMIC tab of the PAMODULE design. The brightly colored layout is the MMIC, face up, and the dimmed shapes are the rest of the system, provided to show the surrounding context. The dimmed shapes are not editable in the current tab.

Tracing Nets from Packages into ICs

In the PAMODULE tab in the image shown below, the MMIC is flipped face down and rotated. You can see the purple and orange highlights following the nets from the package into the MMIC. These were added one at a time, using the Add Physical Trace button, which is the first one in the Net Tracer toolbar shown below. You can use the third button to open the Trace Manager and set the highlight color so that your net is easy to visualize.  You can also toggle trace visibility in the Trace Manager and delete the traces of specific nets.  This way, you can see one or more nets clearly as they traverse all the way from a pin or BGA ball on the package to the gate of a transistor in the IC.   

Running the Cross-Fabric Check on Your System

In ICADVM20.1 ISR18, we introduced a new resource to check your system layout’s connectivity against the associated schematics. Invoke the checker from the Module menu, as shown below. If you’re not in the Edit-in-Concert mode already, it will be invoked for you.  

Once the checks are run, the Cross Fabric Check Control Form opens to help you browse the errors it found. Clicking a number in the control form switches to the appropriate tab, and also displays the appropriate Annotation Browser tab. This way, you can easily clean up errors in your entire design from one central console.

There is also a text report that opens alongside the control form. It contains a great amount of detail, and hopefully you’ll agree that it is clear and concise in its presentation of the errors it finds.

We hope these two additions to the Virtuoso RF environment will help you Get Connected!

Stay tuned for a Rapid Adoption Kit (RAK) detailing the use of Net Tracer and Cross Fabric Check.

Related Resources

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

Brian LaBorde

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 Virtuoso Meets Maxwell

Virtuoso Meets Maxwell series includes posts about the next-generation die, package, and board design flow with a focus on reinventing and optimizing the design process to ensure that the designer remains a designer! Keep watching!

Click Subscribe to visit the Subscription box at the top of the page in which you can submit your email address to receive notifications about our latest Virtuoso Meets Maxwell posts.