Virtuoso Video Diary: Getting Started with the New Virtuoso ADE Product Suite

Hey, did you hear the buzz around the new Virtuoso ADE product suite, which was introduced in IC6.1.7? The products in this suite—Virtuoso ADE Explorer, Virtuoso ADE Assembler, and Virtuoso ADE Verifier—have made a good start, just as we expected!

The new single-test simulation environment, Virtuoso ADE Explorer, provides some really exciting features. Our favorite ones are real-time tuning with Spectre, waveform balloons on schematic, and an integrated graph assistant. Built-in corners and Monte Carlo statistical analysis provide the capability to perform advanced performance analysis of a single block. It’s also interesting to note that if you own a Virtuoso Variation Option (VVO) license, you can access the advanced Monte Carlo features from within Virtuoso ADE Explorer. An artistically-designed, user-friendly interface makes all the features more usable and easy to access. Experience it yourself!

After exploring your design in Virtuoso ADE Explorer, turn to the multi-test environment, Virtuoso ADE Assembler. Not only it is an extension of Virtuoso ADE Explorer to simulate multiple tests together, it also offers some extra features, such as availability of advanced run modes—Global and Local Optimization, Monte Carlo, Worst Case Corners, and Sensitivity Analysis—to meet the advanced simulation needs. Similar to Virtuoso ADE Explorer, you can add a VVO license to run advanced Monte Carlo features as well as verify the yield and get clues on improving it. Another exciting feature worth exploring is the Run Plan assistant. You can use it to plan the simulation runs and set up regressions by creating multiple variations of the setup within a single session. If you ever wished to run simulations where each test has its own run mode, its own set of corners, or where simulation runs could depend on the completion status of other runs, try it now!

And finally, Virtuoso ADE Verifier, which we are sure is going to be liked by those who are interested in monitoring the progress of the complete analog design. It provides a comprehensive infrastructure for an overall verification of all the pieces of the design together. After testing, analyzing, and fine-tuning the various blocks individually using Virtuoso ADE Explorer and Virtuoso ADE Assembler, you can use Virtuoso ADE Verifier to see how the results of each unit are mapped to the highest level circuit specifications.

Although each tool has its own bunch of features, it is interesting to see how intelligently and effortlessly they all are tied together with a common database consisting of maestro cell views. If you haven’t got a chance to try out the tools yet, watch these videos on Cadence Online Support for a quick overview:

• Getting Started with ADE Explorer (requires login)
• Introducing ADE Assembler (requires login)
• Introducing Virtuoso ADE Verifier (requires login)

Related Resources

• Virtuoso ADE Explorer User Guide (requires login)
• Virtuoso ADE Assembler User Guide (requires login)
• Virtuoso ADE Verifier User Guide (requires login)

Virtuoso Video Diary: What's Next

Virtuoso Video Diary will next bring to you a video that introduces WSP Manager and shows you how to use this new form to create and edit width spacing patterns (WSPs), copy WSPs from another design, and generate WSPs from existing shapes in the layout. WSPs are used in advanced-node designs for correct-by-construction track-based routing. Stay tuned…

Ashu Vashishtha, Deepti Mishra Gupta, Namrata Malhotra

About Virtuoso Video Diary

Virtuoso Video Diary is an online journal that relays information about Virtuoso videos that are available in the Cadence Online Support Video Library. For IC6.1.7 and ICADV12.2, over a hundred videos on a wide variety of new and exciting Virtuoso features have already been created. Virtuoso Video Diaries brings you direct links to these videos and other related material, on regular basis, in your mailbox. Subscribe to receive the e-mail notifications.