Siemens Introduces mPower Power Integrity Solution for Analog, Digital and Mixed-signal IC Designs

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Siemens Digital Industries Software introduced new mPower™ power integrity software for analog, digital and mixed signal IC designs. Available today, the new software is the industry's first and only IC power integrity verification solution to provide virtually unlimited scalability for analog, digital, and mixed signal ICs, enabling comprehensive power, electromigration (EM) and voltage drop (IR) analysis for even the largest IC designs.

Siemens enters the fast-growing Integrated Circuit (IC) power analysis market with the EDA industry’s only solution offering power integrity analysis for analog, digital and mixed-signal IC designs of any size. 

mPower software delivers power integrity analysis for all versions of 2D designs, in addition to 2.5/3D IC implementations at any scale, and it easily integrates into existing design flows. Using mPower, IC designers can more quickly and thoroughly verify that their designs meet power-related design goals -- capabilities that can help IC customers dramatically boost quality, enhance reliability and speed time to market.

Unmatched analog functionality; World-class digital performance

Analog ICs convert physical, "real world" data such as sound, motion and video into digital form, making them increasingly critical to a broad range of key applications, including consumer electronics, autonomous vehicles, Internet of Things and other large, fast-growing markets.

For analog IC designers, mPower replaces rough static analysis and SPICE simulation of select nets with an innovative, dynamic solution that delivers highly accurate, simulation-based EM/IR analysis on the largest blocks and chips. Customers using mPower have seen overall runtime improvements vs. their current solution, ranging from 2X faster to actually completing first-pass EM/IR analysis of large analog IP blocks, which was previously impossible.

"Siemens' mPower allows us to do something we have never been able to do before," said Dr. Paolo Miliozzi, vice president of SoC Design and Technology at MaxLinear. "And that is to assess EM/IR during tapeout of large analog circuits with confidence."

In addition to its exceptional analog functionality, Siemens' new digital mPower scalable EM/IR engines also provide "no compromise" analysis for all-digital IC designs. The digital solution easily integrates into existing design flows, provides world-class power analysis functionality, and requires low per-machine memory – all while allowing designers to complete verification for even the largest digital designs.

"Before using mPower, we could not do a single-run full chip EM/IR analysis on our 1000+ core 64-bit RISC-V AI chip," said Darren Jones, vice president of VLSI at Esperanto, a leading developer of AI compute solutions. "Using mPower enables us to run our 24-billion transistor 7nm AI chip on our server farm with fewer resources, and with better turn-around time than we previously thought possible."

The mPower power integrity solution completes Siemens' overall electro-physical signoff suite addressing power, performance, and reliability analysis. Other offerings in this suite include Calibre® PERC software, PowerPro™ software, HyperLynx™ software, and the Analog FastSPICE platforms. With this comprehensive signoff suite, designers can now use an all-Siemens power integrity design flow.

"Design companies must run both block and full-chip EM/IR analysis to confirm that the power grid delivers the necessary current to the devices, and that wires will not fail prematurely," said Joe Sawicki, executive vice president for Siemens' IC EDA Segment. "With our innovative mPower solution, companies now have a fast, scalable dynamic analysis option for analog, digital and mixed signal layouts of any size, as well as silicon-proven accuracy and fast turns for even the largest digital chips."

Availability 

Siemens' mPower power integrity analysis solution for analog, digital and mixed-signal IC designs is available now.

Siemens Digital Industries Software is driving transformation to enable a digital enterprise where engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet tomorrow. The Xcelerator portfolio helps companies of all sizes create and leverage digital twins that provide organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation.