Tool suite tackles signal integrity issues

Paris -- Seeking to address chip design signal integrity challenges, French EDA startup Coupling Wave Solutions SA (CWS) has introduced a software platform that supports the integration of sensitive functions in digital ICs by providing noise analysis across the entire system.

CWS (Moirans, France) says its WaveIntegrity offering reduces the impact of noise when digital, analog and RF blocks are combined on a single silicon die. Its solution is one of the first unified tool suites to simultaneously perform a thorough noise analysis through the substrate of complex ICs, interconnects, pad ring and package, while ensuring noise immunity by fixing design problems, CWS said.

"Today, at the functional design level, it is impossible for the designer to predict and quantify noise," said François Clément, CWS' co-founder and chief technology officer. "The designer . . . cannot determine which noise will reach the block and how much noise will be generated from a particular block."

Integrators normally approach signal integrity problems late in the flow--after physical synthesis, Clément said. That can lead to a correction of the isolation structures or, more seriously and more expensively, of individual block designs--or even to a change in the package or a fundamental change in the architecture.

"The further the correction is achieved in the flow, the more expensive it is," said Clément. "We now offer a methodology that enables system integrators to identify very early in the flow the maximum and minimum limits of noise with a statistics-based prediction of the typical noise they can expect."

WaveIntegrity is a suite of four tools that work independently but share a common set of algorithmic technologies. This ensures better stability and coherence for all users, Clément noted.

First, the WaveMapper tool extracts all parameters that will be needed to model the transfer function and evaluates noise propagated through the chip's substrate, interconnection, pad ring and package. WaveMapper then achieves an irreversible compression of data so that it is impossible to retrieve original profiles from saved parameters. Data can also be encrypted for enhanced security.

WaveLibrarian is dedicated to the automated characterization of small digital cells. "The key point of this tool is to offer a very automated process that requires little time from the people working on libraries," Clément said.

WaveModeler aims to create a signal integrity abstraction for an analog, RF or mixed block. Finally, WaveAnalyst assesses the noise injected by the whole system. "Once the shape of noise has been described, the designer cuts the block again to protect it from the identified noise," Clément said.

Select customers have used WaveIntegrity to analyze about 20 circuits to date. CWS claims the software has ensured 100 percent noise detection success. Available now, WaveIntegrity runs on the Linux operating system as well as Sun workstations. Pricing starts at $80,000 per year.