Virtuoso Video Diary: Knowledge Booster Training Bytes – Part 13: Analog Fault Simulation

In this Knowledge Booster blog, let’s talk about analog defect simulation that analyzes test coverage of manufacturing tests with Cadence Legato Reliability Solution. It is intended to address increased challenges in designing high-reliability analog and mixed-signal ICs for automotive, industrial, aerospace, and defense applications.

Based on the existing Cadence tools, Spectre Simulation platform and Virtuoso ADE Product Suite, Legato provides analog designers with the required tools to manage their design reliability from initial test through active life and aging phases, a complete product lifecycle coverage.

What is Legato Reliability Solution?

Check out the video Introduction to Legato Reliability Solution to understand and know about Legato Reliability Solution.

The Legato Reliability Solution targets three key issues that designers face:

• How to eliminate early failures due to test escapes (Analog Defect Simulation)
• How to ensure devices survive in extreme operating conditions (Electrothermal Analysis)
• How to extend product life (Advanced Aging Analysis)

By performing analog defect simulation, you can eliminate a die with manufacturing defects and resulting test escapes, which are the main source of early failure in IC designs. For more information, check out the video Introduction to Analog Fault Simulation.

Other Cadence Products 

As a part of this solution, the following features have been provided in Cadence products:

• Fault Analysis in Spectre Accelerated Parallel Simulator: This analysis in Spectre provides a transistor-level simulation capability that can be enabled in an analog test methodology to improve test coverage by identifying critical test patterns. It is fast in handling large numbers of faults and also accurate when complete fault analysis precision is required.
• Fault Simulation Run mode in Virtuoso ADE Assembler: ADE Assembler provides an interactive simulation environment to create test setups, inject faults in the test designs, run the fault analysis using Spectre, and present the results for post-simulation analysis. Since analog designers are already familiar with ADE Assembler, running fault analysis is easy and quick.

Check out the following videos to examine how to inject faults in the test designs, run fault analysis using Spectre, and present the results for post-simulation analysis using the Fault Setup Assistant in the ADE Assembler simulation environment.

• Injecting Faults in a Design using the Fault Rules in the ADE Assembler
• Injecting Faults by Creating Individual Faults in the ADE Assembler
• Creating Fault Groups in the ADE Assembler
• Setting Up Run Options and Performing Direct Fault Analysis in the ADE Assembler  
• Setting Up Run Options and Performing Transient Fault Analysis in the ADE Assembler
• Automatic Fault Dropping Using a Run Plan
• Viewing and Analyzing Fault Simulation Result Plots in the ADE Assembler
• Using Fault View to Examine the Fault Summary in the ADE Assembler
• Running Functional Safety Checks in ADE Assembler

Note: Some of the links are accessible only to Cadence customers who have a valid login ID for the Cadence Learning and Support Portal.

Information and FAQs

To find information on creating an account on the Cadence Learning and Support portal, see here.

Related Resources

Blogs

Automotive Reliability: The Bathtub Curve Legato: Making the Bathtub Wider and Deeper Legato: Smooth Reliability for Automobiles

About Virtuoso Video Diary

Virtuoso Video Diary is an online journal that relays information about Virtuoso videos that are available in the Cadence Learning and Support Video Library. Hundreds of interesting videos on a wide variety of new and exciting Virtuoso features have already been created. Virtuoso Video Diary brings you direct links to these videos and other related material, on a regular basis.

Parul Agarwal

On behalf of the Cadence Training team