ELE Times : How can an EDA tool developer avoid design changes in post-production modifications as its very expensive?
Dr Kaustubh Nande : Cost and time are very critical aspects when designing any product. However, power analysis is one of the most complicated of problems. It can add cost to risk factor as errors can kill the product. So it is best to run all the ‘What-if’ scenarios in the early design phase.
Early design decisions lock in most of a product’s costs. Take the latest ANSYS 18 as a product example. Through digital exploration capabilities in ANSYS 18, users can test hundreds of “what-if” concepts early in the design phase and quickly assess product performance for strength, power, thermal, pressure, flow rate, electrical or a number of other performance requirements. In the EDA space, our customers rely heavily on PowerArtist as it helps designers quickly change RTL design description, power intent, clock-gating directives, etc. to see the impact of these modifications on power consumption. Fast turnaround times of RTL power analysis can enable RTL designers to evaluate the power effectiveness of power gating control signals, without the need for re-running simulations to generate design activity. For the same functionality, different architectures can be evaluated across multiple modes of operation in order to finalize an architecture based on the best power-versus-area trade-offs.
Through this digital exploration, designers and product engineers can identify optimal combinations while eliminating outlying designs – saving time and money.
ELE Times : What are the main key points IC Design engineers should look in an EDA tool before buying?
Dr Kaustubh Nande : We’re in the midst of an electronics-centered innovation boom that has transformed the way we communicate, work, learn and entertain. Virtually no product is exempt from these improvements. Electronics innovations have been adopted in industrial and military applications: Smart electronics are redefining everything from just-in-time manufacturing to homeland security. So it is imperative to select the right tool for the product that you are designing.
Key points to look in an EDA:
- Can the tool overcome the challenge of maintaining product integrity as and when required as developers are building additional electronics content into their product designs? Even a few isolated product failures can damage an organization in the form of reputation, sales, stock price, warranty claims, legal costs and credit rating. Product integrity is emerging as a potential problem at a time when the cost of delivering a faulty product to customers has never been higher.
- Utilizing Simulation to the fullest potential: How should your company rule out product designs with the potential to fail? In many cases, the least costly, most effective and most insightful way to ensure product integrity is with engineering simulation. Unlike traditional prototype testing, simulation enables engineers to virtually test how a given product design will perform — well before any physical model is built — against a wide range of scenarios, some of which may be impossible to replicate experimentally. Simulation can be used at any point in the design process, but it is especially beneficial in the early stages when changes can be efficiently and cost effectively implemented.
- Understanding Design Trade-offs- moving beyond a single design parameter: Just as important is system design and integrity. The entire product design community faces an escalating challenge to anticipate the “system effect” of a modern product whose whole is far greater (and more volatile) than the sum of its parts. Untangling the risks is complex. So it is best to know if your tool’s capabilities will go beyond solving problems to developing innovative solutions.
My suggestion would be to choose your simulation software wisely, however, as not all simulation tools are equal. To help ensure that your product designs succeed in the market, engineering and design teams must accurately predict how complex products will behave in a real-world environment — one that changes continuously and involves the interaction of multiple types of physics. Only Multiphysics simulation allows users to create virtual prototypes of their designs operating under such real-world conditions, predicting the interactions between structural mechanics, heat transfer, fluid flow and electromagnetics.
ELE Times : Can EDA technology for designing integrated circuits be applied to the design of systems? Kindly tell us something in this perspective.
Dr Kaustubh Nande : Yes that is exactly what we are doing. Today’s smaller, faster system-on-chip (SoC) designs require that the interdependent chip, package, and board be designed together, but current simulation and testing techniques based on monolithic database architectures running on large, expensive multi-core computers cannot process the massive amount of data involved. The SeaScape architecture enables engineering teams to leverage big data analytics to handle the data demands of multi-physics chip-package-board simulation and testing.
It is a System level Meta Data based software which goes beyond an individual tool. It is the new Elastic Compute technology architecture, modeled after the same big data architectures used in today’s internet operations, but purpose-built for EDA. It allows large amounts of data to be efficiently processed across thousands of cores and machines, delivering the ability to scale linearly in capacity and performance.
ELE Times : Growing introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) devices tell us something about design verification challenges?
Dr Kaustubh Nande : It is true that the simplicity and intuitiveness of today’s smart, connected products masks the complexity embedded beneath. As companies deploy their IoT strategies they realize that the industrial IoT infrastructure and products require a much higher level of reliability, precision, robustness, and innovation, all at a manageable cost.
Verification Challenges:
- Size, Weight, Power and Cooling: The addition of IoT technologies, such as pervasive connectivity and sensing, brings higher density of electronic components, leading to additional size, weight, power, and thermal challenges.
- Durability: One of the attractions of IoT is that trillions of sensors and communication systems will be deployed to collect and share useful information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These systems will be expected to perform reliably not just in their intended operating environment, but must also be able to withstand the rigors of usage in what are often extremely harsh environments whose exact conditions are difficult to define in advance. An integrated approach can lead to more reliable products.
- Antenna Design and Placement: The performance of wireless systems can be very different in the real world when compared with the prototype testing environment of an anechoic chamber. Multipath signal propagation and fading are just some of the issues created by complex real-world structures, mobility, and even humans. For a typical example, consider the multiple devices with antennas installed in a plant. Proliferation of antennas in a complex industrial environment creates reliability issues.
Simulation is a critical success factor in the connected economy to reduce product development cost by reducing the cost of physical testing, accelerating new product introduction and increasing product efficiency. To realize these benefits, companies can no longer afford to design in silos, or they will simply be out-innovated. The disruptors and innovators are going beyond traditional engineering discipline boundaries, resorting to multi-domain and multiphysics analysis.
