Automated Custom Inductor Design
One very large fabless RF design company has adopted PeakView as the means to accelerate their custom design of inductors, baluns, transformers and other passive structures. Previously, design teams had to request EM design and modeling from a centralized team. The process took several days to a few weeks to navigate and was inflexible to changes. To do a good optimization job, several iterations between circuit design and EM design are needed to resize/reshape the physical layout in order to meet stated design goals. It just took too long (7-10 days) for any one layout to be drawn and modeled with existing EM simulation tools. Although design iterations are faster, each spin still consumes 4-5 days.  Upon delivery of the EM models from the modeling team, the designer would return to trying to optimized the circuit. Their was seldom chances to optimize device performance and less ability to verify device behavior in the context of the circuit. Furthermore, many advanced passive structures took several days to achieve a DRC clean layout. And when things would start to stabilize, the layout would undergo more changes to make it better fit the floorplan or provide better device performance. And once again the layout would have to be shipped off to the modeling team for EM modeling. The existing EM design practice was not working because it constrained the designers from getting the exact device they needed for their circuit.

At this company, PeakView EM Synthesis and LEM capabilities were used to streamline the custom design process. EM synthesis was used to quickly generate a layout that was close to what the designer needed. The layout was then customized to change shape, add taps, change port locations, etc. PeakView LEM was then employed to quickly generate new EM and lumped RCLK subcircuit for the new structure. From start to finish, the whole process takes about 15 minutes and can be achieved without ever leaving the Cadence IC design environment! What resulted was the development of a new “Automated Custom” approach to inductor design that’s been embraced across the company.

For layouts generated 100% from scratch or layouts modified from preexisting layouts, PeakView LEM’s “1-click “ layout extraction, EM and subcircuit modeling has eliminated the need to import/export layouts to third party EM solvers. There is no layout simplification needed and EM simulation and subcircuit modeling takes only a few minutes. With this kind of EM modeling turnaround, the designer can take several passes at optimizing the device and circuit. Now, designer’s just think about making the design Smaller, Faster, and getting it done Sooner.