Applied Wave Research has announced the Analog Office suite, which it claims is the first complete IC design system in over a decade that is specifically architected and optimized from the ground up for analog and RFIC design.
The solution boasts of an industry-first, concurrent interconnect-driven and RF-aware design methodology in a unified design environment. The suite is fully integrated into existing digital and mixed-signal IC design flows, and enables analog and RFIC design engineers to significantly shorten their development cycles and speed wireless products to market.
Says James Spoto, president and CEO of AWR, 'The solution provides an entirely new IC design system specifically focused on solving gigahertz analog RFIC challenges. The product embodies years of knowledge in RF, microwave and millimeter wave applications, and delivers a new level of design automation and productivity not possible with other EDA tools on the market.'
The suite design system addresses high-frequency impairments that force the need to obtain complete 'RF closure' between RF IC's system and circuit, electrical and physical, and design and test activities before commitment to costly IC implementation. Delay in 'RF closure' can result in expensive rework and market delays.
Integral to the suite is iNet technology. Unlike existing 'net' systems built on a 'digital-centric' data model, iNet is an RF-accurate net model with multiple levels of abstraction ranging from an ideal short circuit model, to a lumped element model, to a fully distributed transmission line, to a full 3D electromagnetic model. iNet technology provides concurrent and real-time connectivity information between the schematic and layout representations, eliminating the need for a serial post-layout connectivity extraction step.
The suite will be released in Q3 2003. US list prices for yearly, time-based licenses range from US$8,000 to $40,000, depending upon configurations. A Linux version of the software will be available at a later date.
