Best IC Design Software for Small Business

Altium's PDN Analyzer tool integrates with Altium Designer. This allows you to easily troubleshoot issues such as insufficient or excessive copper or uncontrolled voltage drops. You can also detect marginal voltage at critical power points, copper islands or peninsulas, and other issues that could be present in your PCB power system. PDN is the power system for active circuits on printed circuit boards. This includes all interconnections between the voltage regulator module, the metallization pads and die on integrated devices that are used for supply and return power. The entire length of the power delivery network must meet the IC supply voltage limits. Validating your power budget accurately means taking into account the minimum and maximum device limits, worst case voltage drops, combined return-path currents, and other factors. PDN Analyzer will show you exactly where these problems are.

Advance your approach to RF simulation by focusing on the comprehensive design, analysis, and verification of radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs). Gain assurance through the use of steady-state and nonlinear solvers for both design and verification processes. The availability of wireless standard libraries expedites the validation of intricate RFICs. Prior to finalizing an RFIC, it is essential to confirm IC specifications through RF simulation. These simulations take into account various factors such as layout parasitics, intricate modulated signals, and digital control circuitry. With PathWave RFIC Design, you can perform simulations in both frequency and time domains, facilitating seamless transitions between your designs and Cadence Virtuoso. Achieve accurate modeling of components on silicon chips, and enhance your designs using optimization techniques like sweeps and load-pull analysis. Integration of RF designs into the Cadence Virtuoso environment is streamlined, while the implementation of Monte Carlo and yield analysis can significantly boost performance. Additionally, debugging is made easier with safe operating area alerts, allowing for immediate utilization of cutting-edge foundry technology to stay at the forefront of innovation. This holistic approach to RFIC design not only improves efficiency but also elevates the overall quality and reliability of the final products.

Ansys Exalto serves as a post-LVS RLCk extraction software tool designed to assist IC designers in precisely identifying unknown crosstalk across various design hierarchy blocks by extracting lumped-element parasitics and creating an accurate model for electrical, magnetic, and substrate interactions. The software is compatible with most LVS tools and can enhance the RC extraction tool of your preference. By utilizing Ansys Exalto's post-LVS RLCk extraction capabilities, IC designers can effectively forecast electromagnetic and substrate coupling phenomena, enabling signoff on circuits that were previously deemed "too large to analyze." The models generated are back-annotated to the schematic or netlist and are compatible with all circuit simulators. With the rise of RF and high-speed circuits in contemporary silicon systems, accurately modeling electromagnetic coupling has become critical, as it significantly impacts the success of silicon implementations. Thus, Ansys Exalto is an essential asset for designers aiming to navigate the complexities of modern circuit design with precision.

Ansys Maxwell serves as an electromagnetic field solver tailored for applications involving electric machines, transformers, wireless charging systems, permanent magnet latches, actuators, and various electromechanical devices. It effectively analyzes static, frequency-domain, and time-varying electric and magnetic fields. The software also provides specialized design tools specifically for electric machines and power converters. With Maxwell, users can accurately assess the nonlinear and transient behavior of electromechanical elements and their impacts on drive circuits and control system architectures. By utilizing Maxwell’s sophisticated electromagnetic field solvers and integrating them with circuit and systems simulation technologies, users can gain insights into the performance of electromechanical systems prior to constructing a physical prototype. Additionally, Maxwell is recognized for delivering reliable simulations of low-frequency electromagnetic fields found in industrial applications, ensuring optimal design and functionality in real-world scenarios. This capability makes it an essential tool for engineers looking to refine their designs and improve overall system performance.

Ansys Icepak serves as a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool specifically designed for managing thermal aspects of electronics. This software effectively forecasts airflow, temperature distributions, and heat transfer within integrated circuit (IC) packages, printed circuit boards (PCBs), electronic assemblies, and power electronics. Utilizing the renowned Ansys Fluent CFD solver, Ansys Icepak offers robust solutions for electronic cooling, facilitating thorough thermal and fluid flow evaluations of various electronic components. The software is integrated with the Ansys Electronics Desktop (AEDT), which features a user-friendly graphical interface for enhanced usability. Users can conduct comprehensive analyses of conduction, convection, and radiation, benefiting from advanced functions that enable modeling of both laminar and turbulent flows, as well as species transport involving radiation and convection. Furthermore, Ansys provides a holistic PCB design solution that allows for the simulation of PCBs, ICs, and packages, leading to precise assessments of entire electronic systems. This capability empowers engineers to optimize thermal management strategies effectively, ensuring reliable and efficient performance of electronic devices.

Our advanced web platform significantly enhances the productivity of chip developers and verification engineers, allowing them to design and troubleshoot at a pace ten times quicker than before. With Verilator, users can effortlessly initiate and execute thousands of tests simultaneously with just one click. It also facilitates the easy sharing of test outcomes and waveforms within the organization, allows for tagging colleagues on specific signals, and provides robust tracking of test and regression failures. By utilizing Verilator to create Dockerized simulation binaries, we efficiently distribute test executions across our computing cluster, after which we gather the results and log files and have the option to rerun any tests that failed to produce waveforms. The incorporation of Docker ensures that the test executions are both consistent and reproducible. SiLogy ultimately boosts the efficiency of chip developers by shortening the time required for design and debugging processes. Prior to the advent of SiLogy, the leading method for diagnosing a failing test entailed manually copying lines from log files, analyzing waveforms on personal machines, or rerunning simulations that could take an inordinate amount of time, often spanning several days. Now, with our platform, engineers can focus more on innovation rather than being bogged down by cumbersome debugging processes.

Advance your RF simulation capabilities to effectively design, analyze, and verify radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) beyond conventional methods. Gain assurance through the use of steady-state and nonlinear solvers tailored for both design and verification processes. Accelerate the validation of intricate RFICs with wireless standard libraries designed for efficiency. Ensure precise modeling of components on silicon chips to achieve optimal accuracy. Enhance your designs using load-pull analysis and parameter sweeps for better performance outcomes. Conduct RF simulations within the Cadence Virtuoso and Synopsys Custom Compiler environments to streamline your workflow. Employ Monte Carlo simulations and yield analysis to further boost performance metrics. Early in the design phase, evaluate error vector magnitude (EVM) in alignment with the latest communication standards to ensure compliance. Leverage cutting-edge foundry technology right from the start of your project. It is essential to monitor specifications like EVM through RF simulation during the early stages of RFIC design. The simulations account for the effects of layout parasitics, intricate modulated signals, and digital control circuitry. Utilizing Keysight RFPro Circuit allows for comprehensive simulation in both frequency and time domains, enhancing the overall design process and accuracy. This multifaceted approach ensures that your RFICs not only meet but exceed industry standards.

Utilizing the Ansys Electronics solution suite significantly reduces testing expenses, guarantees adherence to regulatory standards, enhances reliability, and greatly shortens your product development timeline. This approach not only facilitates the creation of top-tier and innovative products but also empowers you to address the most crucial elements of your designs through advanced simulation capabilities. Whether you're involved in antenna, RF, microwave, PCB, package, IC design, or electromechanical devices, our industry-leading simulators are at your disposal. These tools effectively tackle challenges related to electromagnetic interference, thermal management, signal integrity, power integrity, parasitic effects, cabling, and vibrations within your designs. Moreover, our comprehensive product simulation offers you the opportunity to achieve first-pass success in designing various systems, including airplanes, vehicles, smartphones, laptops, wireless chargers, and more, ensuring that your projects are not only successful but also innovative. As a result, you can confidently bring your ideas to fruition with efficiency and accuracy.

Accelerate your market readiness by simplifying design processes with superior DFT solutions. Tessent’s silicon lifecycle management tools not only offer sophisticated debugging capabilities but also incorporate essential safety and security features, along with in-life data analytics to tackle the dynamic challenges present in the current silicon lifecycle. By establishing a framework that enhances design testability, these management solutions deliver rigorous testing, uncover defects and concealed yield impediments, and extend their utility to system debugging and validation. This comprehensive suite of tools effectively scrutinizes data, providing vital system insights that can be leveraged for ongoing monitoring throughout the lifecycle. To achieve the utmost test quality, streamline yield ramp-up, and bolster safety, security, and reliability, utilize industry-leading solutions for DFT, debugging, and in-life monitoring, complemented by robust data analytics. Furthermore, reduce time to yield, address manufacturing anomalies, and recover yield affected by systematic defects to enhance overall operational efficiency. In this way, organizations can ensure both swift adaptation to market demands and sustained product excellence.

Embrace the future with the Sigrity X Platform, where cutting-edge innovation harmonizes with peak optimization. Gain access to unparalleled signal and power integrity for your PCB and IC package designs, propelling you far past the existing boundaries of signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) technology. Picture yourself skillfully navigating the intricate challenges of electronic design, achieving not just your targets but exceeding them with remarkable efficiency and accuracy. With Sigrity X, you’re engaging with a transformative tool that fosters a seamless integration of in-design analysis within the Allegro X PCB and IC Package platforms. Immerse yourself in an extensive array of SI/PI analysis, in-design interconnect modeling, and PDN analysis tools that are specifically engineered to elevate your performance, ensuring that your projects consistently surpass expectations and stay within timeframes and budgets. Leverage the capabilities of the Sigrity X Platform to guarantee exceptional performance and reliability in your upcoming designs, setting a new standard for success. This is your opportunity to redefine what is possible in electronic design and lead the way in innovation.

The Solido variation-aware design solutions, alongside IP validation, library characterization, and simulation technologies driven by cutting-edge AI, are utilized by thousands of designers at leading semiconductor firms across the globe. This integrated suite features AI-enhanced SPICE, Fast SPICE, and mixed-signal simulators that empower clients to significantly expedite crucial design and verification processes for advanced analog, mixed-signal, and custom IC designs. It delivers the industry's quickest and most thorough integrated IP validation solution, ensuring complete and seamless IP quality assurance from the design phase all the way to tape-out, encompassing all design perspectives and IP updates. Moreover, this comprehensive AI-driven design environment facilitates both nominal and variation-aware verification of custom IC circuits, achieving full design coverage with far fewer simulations while maintaining the accuracy comparable to brute-force methods. Furthermore, it offers rapid and precise library characterization tools that leverage machine learning for enhanced performance and reliability.

Precision provides a vendor-independent solution for FPGA synthesis, ensuring top-tier performance and area efficiency while offering robust design capabilities paired with strong connections to simulation and formal equivalency checking tools. Its products integrate seamlessly with Siemens' FormalPro LEC for equivalency verification and HDL Designer, facilitating design capture and verification in conjunction with ModelSim/Questa. The entry-level FPGA synthesis tool, Precision RTL, delivers exceptional quality results as a vendor-agnostic solution. In response to the needs of space and military aerospace applications, which often require specialized FPGAs equipped with inherent protection against SEEs, NanoXplore has launched new FPGA offerings aimed at this sector. Collaborating closely with NanoXplore, Precision Synthesis is the first to provide comprehensive synthesis support for the NG-Ultra device. Additionally, Precision boasts seamless integration with the NXmap place and route tool, effectively completing the design workflow from RTL through to gates and ultimately to bitstream generation. This integration not only streamlines the development process but also enhances the reliability of the final product, ensuring it meets industry standards.

PowerPro provides an extensive array of features tailored for RTL designers focused on low-power design. It includes power estimation tools applicable to both RTL and gate-level designs, facilitating early power checks that help identify potential power issues during the RTL development phase. Additionally, it incorporates clock and memory gating techniques to enhance power optimization. With highly accurate estimations that remain within 10% of final signoff, PowerPro's technology leverages sophisticated engines to offer a wide range of analytical capabilities. Furthermore, its automatic power optimization process generates low-power RTL seamlessly while ensuring integrated logic equivalence checking. Notably, PowerPro stands out as the only validated low-power RTL generation technology currently available in the market, solidifying its position as a leader in this domain. This unique combination of features not only streamlines the design process but also significantly reduces power consumption in electronic products.

Oasys-RTL meets the demand for enhanced capacity, quicker runtimes, elevated quality of results (QoR), and physical awareness by performing optimization at a more abstract level while also incorporating integrated floorplanning and placement features. This tool significantly improves the quality of results by facilitating physical accuracy, efficient floorplanning, and rapid optimization cycles, ensuring timely design closure. Its power-aware synthesis capabilities encompass support for multi-threshold libraries, automatic clock gating, and a UPF-based multi-voltage domain flow. During the synthesis process, Oasys-RTL intelligently inserts the necessary level shifters, isolation cells, and retention registers according to the power intent specified in the UPF framework. Additionally, Oasys-RTL can generate a floorplan directly from the design's RTL by applying dataflow and adhering to timing, power, area, and congestion constraints. It adeptly incorporates regions, fences, blockages, and other physical directives via advanced floorplan editing tools while automatically positioning macros, pins, and pads to optimize the layout. This holistic approach ensures that designers can efficiently manage complex designs and meet stringent performance requirements.

Create your photonic integrated circuit within a layout-focused workflow that allows designers to utilize either a drag-and-drop interface or a script-based approach. Both methods are facilitated by a comprehensive custom IC design layout editor, which also manages the physical verification and tape-out stages. L-Edit Photonics allows for rapid photonic design creation through its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality, eliminating the need for coding. Upon finalizing the design, a netlist can be generated to support photonic simulations. The PIC design is entirely integrated within an IC layout editor, enabling users to develop layouts without writing any code, thus supporting a layout-centric approach that does not require a schematic. For those who prefer a schematic flow, S-Edit is available as an optional tool. Moreover, a simulation netlist can be produced for input into a photonic simulator, and photonic simulations are seamlessly incorporated through partnerships with various providers. Additionally, multiple foundries offer photonic PDKs to enhance design capabilities. Overall, this comprehensive workflow simplifies the photonic design process while catering to various designer preferences.

L-Edit MEMS stands out as the premier platform for 3D MEMS design. The initial phase of creating a digital twin for MEMS devices starts with capturing designs in L-Edit. Designers in the MEMS field gain significant advantages from an integrated environment that encompasses device design, modeling for fabrication, and connections to FEM analysis tools. As the leading standard for MEMS design, L-Edit MEMS is uniquely equipped with true native curve support, making it the sole tool crafted specifically for MEMS and integrated circuit design. This platform serves as the cornerstone for the MEMS digital twin, facilitating not only device design but also 3D modeling of fabrication and simulations through established partnerships. Users can generate a 3D solid model based on layout data and descriptions of the fabrication process. It provides an insightful 3D graphical representation of the MEMS fabrication journey. Furthermore, it supports multi-physics simulations in conjunction with widely-used FEM analysis tools, allowing for the export of models to FEM/BEM simulators for thorough 3D evaluations. With its component libraries, design reuse is made simple and efficient, enhancing productivity in the MEMS design process. Ultimately, L-Edit MEMS offers a comprehensive suite of tools that empowers designers to innovate and streamline their workflows effectively.

Creating designs at advanced process nodes necessitates a novel approach to place-and-route to handle the growing intricacies involved. Aprisa stands out as a detail-route-focused physical design platform tailored for contemporary SoCs. Operating as a complete RTL2GDSII solution, Aprisa facilitates digital implementation by providing comprehensive synthesis and place-and-route capabilities for both top-level hierarchical designs and block-level executions. Its alignment with signoff tools for STA timing and DRC offers tape-out quality correlation, which minimizes design closure challenges while ensuring peak performance, power efficiency, and area optimization (PPA). With its out-of-the-box performance, Aprisa enables physical designers to streamline each phase of the place-and-route process, accelerating their time-to-market. The unified architecture and shared analysis engines within Aprisa guarantee outstanding timing and DRC correlation throughout implementation stages and with signoff tools, significantly cutting down on the required flow iterations and engineering change orders (ECOs). As a result, this innovative approach ultimately enhances both productivity and design quality in complex projects.

Sigrity X Advanced SI Technology offers advanced signal integrity analysis for PCBs and IC packaging, covering DC up to 56GHz, with features such as automated die-todie SI analysis, topology exploring, and simulation of high-speed interfaces. It supports IBIS-AMI and customizable compliance kits to ensure that your designs meet rigorous standards.

Cadence®, Sigrity X OptimizationPI™ technology performs a complete AC frequency analyzer of boards and IC package to ensure high performance and save between 15% and 50 % in decoupling capacitor costs. It supports both pre-and post-layout studies and quickly pinpoints the most cost-effective decap selections. Sigrity X OptimizePI is based on proven Cadence hybrid magnetic circuit analysis technology combined with the unique Sigrity Optimization engine to help you quickly identify the best possible placement and decap locations.

Cadence®, Sigrity X PowerSI® technology helps you to tackle increasingly difficult issues related switching noise, signal coupling and target voltage levels. It provides fast, accurate and detailed electrical analyses of full IC packages and PCBs. It can be used to develop power and signal integrity guidelines before layout, or after layout to verify performance and improve the design without a prototype. Sigrity X's electromagnetic (EM) solver technology allows you to perform a wide range of studies, including identifying trace and via coupling problems, power/ground fluctuation caused by simultaneously switching out put, and designing regions that are below or above voltage targets. PowerSI technology allows you to extract frequency-dependent parameter models for network networks and visualize complex spatial relationships.

Certified by Foundry, the AFS Platform provides nm SPICE accuracy that is five times quicker than conventional SPICE and more than twice as fast as parallel SPICE simulators. It is recognized as the quickest nm circuit verification platform for analog, RF, mixed-signal, and custom digital designs, now enhanced with the innovative eXTreme technology. For extensive post-layout circuits, the latest AFS eXTreme technology boasts a capacity exceeding 100 million elements and operates three times faster than traditional post-layout simulators. The platform is compatible with all major digital solvers, ensuring top-tier usability that maximizes the reuse of verification infrastructure. With sophisticated verification and debugging features, it significantly boosts verification coverage while enhancing design quality and reducing time-to-market. Achieving SPICE-accurate, high-sigma verification, it is a staggering 1,000 times quicker than brute-force simulation methods. User-friendly and easy to implement, the AFS eXTreme technology is offered at no extra cost, making it an invaluable tool for engineers seeking efficiency and precision in their design processes. Its ability to streamline complex workflows further solidifies its standing as a leader in circuit verification solutions.