Creative Chips uses Galaxy for mixed-signal chip
Synopsys
Galaxy Implementation Platform
Synopsys has announced that Creative Chips has taped out its most complex mixed-signal chip to date using the Galaxy Implementation Platform.
The 180nm CMOS industrial bus controller contains complex analogue and digital blocks that were created using the Galaxy cell-based physical implementation and Synopsys's Galaxy Custom Designer custom implementation solution as a unified platform to accelerate time-to-market.
Custom Designer was also used for full chip editing and final chip finishing tasks.
Creative Chips's latest design contains a large digital logic core and custom digital and analogue components, including phase-locked loops (PLLs), voltage regulators and embedded RAM.
The company's challenge was to integrate this complex mixed-signal design on a cost-effective mainstream process while meeting its customer's schedule and die size requirements.
Custom Designer was used to complete the layout for custom digital and analogue blocks, Synopsys's HSPICE circuit simulator was used for the pre-layout simulations, and the Customsim FastSPICE simulator was used to verify the extracted netlists from the StarRC extraction tool.
After final sign-off using IC Validator for layout versus schematic (LVS) and design rule checking (DRC), the design was successfully taped out.
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