Cadence Announces Voltus InsightAI

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Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced the new Cadence® Voltus™ InsightAI, the industry’s first generative AI technology that automatically identifies the root cause of EM-IR drop violations early in the design process and selects and implements the most efficient fixes to improve power, performance, and area (PPA). Using Voltus InsightAI, customers can fix up to 95% of violations prior to signoff, leading to a 2X productivity improvement in EM-IR closure.

Power integrity is a major design challenge at advanced nodes, with designers regularly facing a significant number of EM-IR violations at signoff, making it imperative to address this challenge early in the design phase. One of the major bottlenecks of in-design EM-IR analysis is that it is computationally very expensive due to the size and coupled nature of the power network. The new AI-driven Voltus InsightAI helps to overcome this bottleneck by utilizing new breakthrough machine learning methods for very fast incremental IR analysis. Using Voltus InsightAI, customers can use in-design analysis to enhance on-chip and chiplet power integrity. The technology enables greater engineering efficiency for uncovering issues early and offers key productivity-enhancing features:

• Fast IR Inferencing Engine: The solution uses proprietary neural networks to build models of the power grid and can perform extremely fast incremental IR analysis to provide instant feedback on the impact of design changes.
• IR Drop Diagnostics: Voltus InsightAI uses deep learning to discover the root cause of IR drop problems and can quickly identify aggressors, victims and resistance bottlenecks. It uses electrical, spatial and timing factors for predicting IR drop issues during design.
• Multi-Method Fixing: Decision-tree methods are utilized to perform timing and design rule check (DRC)-aware fixes of IR drop, using multiple methods like placement, grid reinforcement, routing and engineering change orders (ECOs). Voltus InsightAI selects precise fixing methods based on the root cause of the problem, driving better utilization and improved PPA.
• Fully Integrated Solution: Voltus InsightAI is fully integrated with Cadence’s solutions, including the Cadence Innovus™ Implementation System, the Cadence Tempus™ Timing Solution, the Cadence Voltus IC Power Integrity Solution, and the Cadence Pegasus™ Verification System for complete IR design closure from implementation to signoff​ that is timing- and DRC-aware.

“As we move to more advanced nodes, EM-IR is quickly becoming one of the most pressing challenges, requiring novel and innovative approaches to address customer needs. With Voltus InsightAI, Cadence has pioneered applying generative AI technology to EM-IR, focusing not just on signoff, but early detection and prevention of EM-IR violations as well,” said Ben Gu, Corporate Vice President of R&D, Multiphysics Systems Analysis Business Unit, Cadence. “With this capability, designers don’t need to over-design the power grid, thereby enabling far better PPA. Customers are seeing impressive results as they can leverage this breakthrough technology to fix up to 95% of violations prior to signoff and achieve more than 2X productivity improvement in EM-IR closure.”