PRESS RELEASE

10 March 2016

Contact:
Niek Nijenhuis niek.nijenhuis@phoenixbv.com

The vision of the Virtuoso Platform-Based Design Flow for Electronic /Photonic ICs.

PhoeniX Software collaborates with Cadence in providing close integration with Virtuoso to obtain a true EPDA design environment

With the growing interest in silicon photonics, manufactured in electronics facilities instead of dedicated photonics or multi-purpose facilities, it can be observed that the electronics oriented organisations are using software tools from the electronics domain. These Electronics Design Automation (EDA) solutions have not been developed for photonic IC design and are therefore lacking dedicated capabilities for layout implementation and simulations. This results often in the fact that the photonic IC designers apply specialised photonic chip design tools, to overcome some of the limitations of EDA tools.

For example layout tools should facilitate curvilinear and all angle design and the verification tools need to be extended to support photonic concepts for functional verification. These requirements are not just true for silicon photonics, also other photonics technologies impose the same kind of challenges on the design tools. Cadence as one of the leading software suppliers for the electronics industry reckognizes the potential of photonics and decided to start collaborations with photonics software vendors to create a combined electronic photonic design environment, combining tools developed for electronic IC design with leading edge photonic design solutions.

Virtuoso Layout Suite XL
Part of the Cadence Virtuoso Layout Suite family of products, Virtuoso Layout Suite XL is a connectivity- and constraint-driven layout environment built on common design intent. It supports the physical implementation of analog, custom-digital, and mixed-signal designs at the device, cell, block, and chip level. Seamlessly integrated with the Virtuoso custom design platform and built on the OpenAccess database, Virtuoso Layout Suite XL ensures faster convergence on design goals and more efficient layout implementation.
PhoeniX Software and Cadence have developed a highly efficient interface between OptoDesigner and the Virtuoso Design Environment to support the layout implementation of photonic elements, components and waveguide interconnects. The photonic building block platform as provided by OptoDesigner enables designers to define optical or geometrical specifications in the schematic and/or layout and OptoDesigner will provide the actual implementation of the layout and provide parameters back to Virtuoso.

Complete EPDA design flow
The interface as described above is part of a larger collaboration between Cadence, Lumerical and PhoeniX Software to jointly develop an integrated Electronic/Photonic Design Automation (EPDA) environment for designing photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Built around the Cadence Virtuoso custom design platform, this complete EPDA environment enables schematic or layout-driven design flows for photonic and electronic circuits, photonic component parameter extraction and model generation, photonic circuit simulation and photonic mask layout implementation for both monolithic and hybrid (3D-IC) photonic circuits.

The EPDA environment enables schematic or layout-driven design flows for photonic and electronic circuits, photonic component parameter extraction and model generation, photonic circuit simulation and photonic mask layout implementation. Checkout the Product Showcase @ OFC. 23rd Of March / 12.00 PM – 12.30 PM / Show Floor Theater III

More information at the Cadence website: www.cadence.com/news/photonics.