IQ-Analog selects Diakopto’s ParagonX to improve performance of their ICs

Diakopto announced this IQ-analogues chose ParagonX to speed up the analysis, debugging, and optimization of their next-generation (IC) integrated circuits.

ParagonX’s innovative software platform and methodology provides useful insights to help IQ-Analog engineers quickly and easily identify bottlenecks and the root causes of IC design challenges caused by layout parasites. This allows IQ-Analog to more effectively improve the productivity, energy efficiency, strength and reliability of their IC projects in modern FinFET technologies.

Emerging 5G systems can support more than 10 times the antenna bandwidth and require more than 10 times the number of antenna elements compared to previous LTE systems, resulting in the need for 100 times higher data conversion and processing. IQ-Analog meets this market requirement with its new pulsed wave quantization technology (TPWQ), which allows digital processing of analog signals in time domain directly to the antenna. This flexibility offers 50 times lower cost and four times lower power consumption than commercially available systems, ushering in a new era of software-defined radio platforms for next-generation 5G communications.

“As we migrate our projects to advanced FinFET technologies, the parasites of the IC layout have become the dominant source of bottlenecks for performance and reliability, as well as delays in our development cycle,” said Michael Capes, CEO of IQ-Analog. “Diakopto’s ParagonX is a gift from God that helps us navigate and overcome these challenges. It is extremely fast and easy to use and provides very intuitive results and in-depth insights into the problems caused by parasites to stimulate improvements and optimizations in our design. “

Parasites are unforeseen elements in IC designs that degrade circuit performance, precision, energy efficiency, strength and reliability. The ever-increasing need for higher density, faster speed and greater precision of integrated circuits, combined with continued migration to more advanced technological nodes, redefined the role of parasites in IC design. Power-to-performance (PPA) metrics and time to market for modern integrated circuits are now dominated by built-in connections and layout parasites. Resolving the root causes of IC design problems has become extremely difficult, tedious and time consuming.

ParagonX offers a new methodology that treats parasites as a first-order design parameter. It is orders of magnitude faster than other EDA solutions and helps engineers quickly find the few critical parasitic elements (thousands, millions or billions) that are responsible for bottlenecks, suffocation points and weak areas. This reduces troubleshooting time and IC optimization associated with parasites from days or weeks to minutes or hours, which is especially valuable during the removal phase.

“We are pleased to have IQ-Analog select ParagonX for their innovative 5G broadband projects on transceivers,” said Maxim Ershov, CEO and Chief Technical Officer of Diakopto. “This speaks to the flexibility of our ParagonX platform, as it is accepted for a wide range of applications, including high-speed SerDes, 5G wireless networking, optical communications, image sensors, low-power IoT, memories and much more.”

A unique feature of the ParagonX software is its incomparable ease of use. It offers a unique experience that allows novice users to get started with minimal training. The tool does not require complex setup, configuration, CAD support or foundry qualification. This extremely intuitive and flexible methodology allows quick acceptance by new users and design teams.