Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

John O'Donovan

Donald John O'Riordan

Jushan Xie

Saibal Saha

Arthur Schaldenbrand

A system, method, and computer program product for extending device model parameter specification flexibility when using a subcircuit wrapper. Embodiments facilitate device modeling by allowing a modeling engineer to eliminate the explicit specification of a large set of wrapped device instance parameters as parameters to the subcircuit wrapper itself. A circuit designer may now use the subcircuit wrapper to specify an instance of the subcircuit without having to explicitly provide values for all such parameters. The simulator program's built-in device model calculates its default parameter values, which are often the result of complex expressions involving the other parameters, resulting in more accurate simulations. Subcircuit wrappers no longer need to be explicitly regenerated when a new version of the wrapped device model becomes available for the simulator (e.g., one that supports additional instance parameters that were not present on the earlier version when the subcircuit wrapper was created).

Simplified device model extension using subcircuits

A user specifies layout styles for devices in a circuit schematic, where the layout styles capture features of device arrangements and device correlations. The resulting layout can be simulated by using a computer so that one or more performance metrics can be evaluated for the circuit. In some cases, test chips may be used to determine device correlations for arrangements corresponding to different layout styles.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

John O'Donovan