Marrying their respective expertise in mixed-signal and RF design automation, Cadence Design Systems of San Jose and Agilent Technologies of Palo Alto, Calif., have inked a five-year technology alliance to hasten communications product development. Together, they plan to boost design productivity and reduce internal CAD support costs for designers of ICs for the wireless and wireline communications arenas.
The alliance's first phase will see joint development of a more integrated design flow for large-scale RF/mixed-signal ICs. Greater interactivity is in the works between Cadence's Analog Design Environment, which is aimed at full-custom analog and RFIC design, and Agilent's Advanced Design System suite, targeted more broadly at communication system design work. Look for jointly developed technologies to become available in the second half of 2002.
Planned flow improvements include unification of design capture and simulation setup in the Cadence environment. Another enhancement is an integration architecture based on the existing Dynamic Link technology that joins the design capture and simulation setup segments of the flow. The improvements will be previewed at this June's Design Automation Conference in New Orleans.
Future phases of the alliance will expand the design flow to incorporate more design, verification, and test technologies from both companies. For more information, you can visit their Web sites at www.cadence.com and www.agilent.com.