Welcome to the New Sound of Analog Design

The new Virtuoso^® ADE product suite enables designers to fully explore, analyze, and verify their design against design goals so that they can maintain design intent throughout the design cycle. As the industry’s leading solution for analog simulation control and management, the Virtuoso ADE product suite allows users to flexibly select the product(s) that best support their design needs as they move through the design flow.

Virtuoso ADE Explorer provides a quick entry into the analysis process with easy execution of simulations, including support for running Monte Carlo statistics, corner sweeps, pass/ fail analysis, and real-time tuning with the Cadence Spectre^® Circuit Simulator.  In addition, the  new “waveform balloons” can be placed on the schematic to allow the designer to monitor signal progress.  If things are going bad, stop the simulator and adjust your design.

Virtuoso ADE Assembler extends the Virtuoso ADE Explorer’s capabilities across multiple testbenches simulta­neously, allowing the user to monitor all aspects of the larger analog block they are creating by enabling easy and direct review of all the simulation results.  Users can generate specification-comparison sheets and other datasheets as needed. It takes its visual cues from the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment XL so no new learning is required. The user can also group together multiple tests and run them using conditional statements.  You can even take information from the first group of simulations and plug it into the next group of simulations.  Creating regression scripts has never been easier.  The Virtuoso ADE Assembler also contains targeted tools for variation analysis built in for doing parasitic analysis, design centering, worst-case corners and design migration. 

For more advanced statistical analyses, the Virtuoso Variation Option enables foundry certified fast Monte Carlo analysis for FinFETs, high yield (>3 sigma) estimation, analyze statistical sensitivity and individual device mismatch contributions, create statistically derived worst case corners and a one button click yield improvement flow.

Finally there is the  Virtuoso ADE Verifier, which is designed to match the highest level circuit specifications with individual analysis tests being developed by different users or design sites. Because status is managed in one location, circuit architects, design manager and design leads know the complete verification status of each piece of analog design at all times.  No more guesswork.  With Virtuoso ADE Verifier integrated into the Virtuoso framework, the latest status of the tests is always known. Now meeting all the expectations and specifications to have ISO certification for your analog designs can be done in one location.

Each of the four tools are designed to work cohesively with a new shared data file.  Now moving back and forth into the specific tool you need is a snap.  But don't worry, the classic Virtuoso Analog Design Environment L, XL and GXL products are alive and well allowing you to consider transitioning at your own leisure with no loss of support for the tools you are using today.

We encourage you to talk to your local Cadence account team to get more information on these latest developments.  And stop by a CDNLive or DAC to see and learn more.  We also invite you to attend one of the Technology on Tour conferences we are doing around the world.   Finally, you can check out Cadence Online Support (https://support.cadence.com/) if you have an account to find more detailed information, Rapid Adoption Kits and other collateral to see if transitioning to the new tools is right for you.

Welcome to the new sound of analog design.