4.4.6 to 5.0 Migration Guide, Product Version 5.0

1

---

Migrating from IC 4.4.6 to IC 5.0

This guide is limited to information needed for migrations and for initial strategic planning for using IC 5.0. Almost no features in IC 4.4.6 products affect the migration to the IC 5.0 design environment.

Cadence advises that you separate migration tasks from any major changes to your design methodology, including design management. This approach facilitates a smooth migration and is the easiest way to preserve compatibilities between releases.

Note:  This guide does not cover issues already described in the Configuration Guide, the Installation Guide, Product Notes, What's New, Frequently Asked Questions, or Known Problems and Solutions.

The following sections are discussed in this chapter:

* Compatibility

• Compatibility Issues

• Licensing Issues

• Naming Changes

• New Tools

• Discontinued Products and Tools

Compatibility Issues

In IC 5.0, there are no database changes. All IC 4.4.6 CDBA data and SKILL is forward compatible. Data migrated to IC 5.0 might not be usable in earlier releases. When working on mixed releases, be careful to ensure backward compatibility.

Virtuoso XL Layout Editor

• The Virtuoso® Custom Placer in IC 5.0 requires the IC Connectivity and Infrastructure (ICCI) version 11.0 executable sbtool.exe. A separate installation may be necessary.

• The Virtuoso Custom Placer IC 4.4.6 row definitions are not compatible with IC 5.0. You need to redefine rows. The impact should be minimal.

• The Virtuoso Custom Placer is no longer a standalone tool. For IC 5.0, it is shipped with the Virtuoso XL Layout Editor.

• The following Virtuoso XL Layout Editor environment variables are obsolete and are no longer supported by Cadence. Changing the values of these variables may cause the Virtuoso XL Layout Editor or other Cadence software to behave improperly or quit.

  • dlrNetConstNetClass

  • dlrNetConstNetWeight

  • dlrRoutingBoundaryOption

  • rowGroundOffset

  • rowPowerOffset

  • rowMOSInitOrient

  • rowSTDInitOrient

  • rowMOSAlignment

  • rowHorizontalAlignment

  • rowVerticalAlignment

  • rowHorizontalOrientations

  • rowVerticalOrientations

  • rowComponentTypes

• Using the Virtuoso Layout Editor Constraint Manager, IC 4.4.6 and IC 5.0 constraint data formats are completely different. IC 4.4.6 data is automatically converted when it is opened in IC 5.0. After conversion, the data is no longer backward compatible.

SKILL Code

• If you need to convert custom SKILL code when migrating to IC 5.0, refer to Chapter 8, "Converting Custom Cadence SKILL Code," in the Compatibility Guide.

Analog Mixed-Signal

• A minor change exists in the way diode calculations for the Spectre® circuit simulator are done for bsim3 in IC 5.0.

Licensing Issues

Cadence bases its licensing software on the FLEXlm license technology. The Cadence IC 5.0 release is based on version 7.2 of the FLEXlm software. Because the FLEXlm system is not "forward" compatible, you must ensure that you are running version 7.2 or later of both lmgrd (the FLEXlm daemon) as well as a matching version of cdslmd (the Cadence licensing daemon).

Note:  Even if you are using older versions of the IC tools, you must upgrade your license server to this latest software. This will still allow you to continue to use your older software while migrating to this new version.

For more information, refer to the Cadence License Manager documentation or contact Cadence Customer Support.

Naming Changes

The 4.4.6 family names Affirma and Envisia are no longer used. The family name Assura exists for only a few products in 5.0. Product names have been changed as follows:

4.4.6 Product Names	5.0 Product Names
Affirma Advanced Analysis Tools	Cadence Advanced Analysis Tools
Affirma AMS Distributed Processing Option	Cadence Analog Distributed Processing Option
Affirma Analog Circuit Design Environment	Cadence Analog Design Environment
Affirma Mixed-Signal Circuit Design Environment	Cadence Mixed-Signal Circuit Design Environment
Affirma Modelwriter	Cadence Modelwriter
Affirma RF Simulator	SpectreRF Circuit Simulator
Affirma Spectre Circuit Simulator	Spectre Circuit Simulator
Affirma SpectreRF	SpectreRF Circuit Simulator
Affirma Verilog-A Debugging Tool	Cadence Verilog-A Debugging Tool
Assura Coefficient Generator	Coefficient Generator
Assura ConclCe	ConclCe
Assura Diva Interactive	Diva Interactive
Assura HyperExtract	Cadence HyperExtract
Cadence Constraint Editor	Virtuoso Constraint Manager
Cadence Documentation	CDSDoc
Cadence Online Documentation Configuration	CDSDoc Configuration Guide
Composer to Spectre Simulation Solution	Virtuoso Schematic Composer to Spectre Interface
Design Framework II	Cadence Design Framework II
Envisia LEF/DEF Language	LEF/DEF Language
Envisia Silicon Ensemble	Silicon Ensemble
Envisia Gate Ensemble	Silicon Ensemble
Virtuoso Layout Accelerator	Virtuoso XL Layout Editor

Some names within a product have also changed:

4.4.6 Names within a Product	5.0 Names within a Product
Corner Tools model style naming mechanism changed, such as Multiple Model Library	multipleModelLib
PDisto analysis in SpectreRF	Quasi-Periodic Steady-State (QPSS) analysis
Spectre +spp command	spectrespp, to use MDL (measurement description language) in the Hspice-to-Spectre flow

New Tools

The following new tools are available for the IC 5.0 release.

• Circuit Surfer

  This new tool provides fast and accurate yield analysis on circuits that can be modeled by polynomials. The Response Surface Modeling (RSM) technique used in this tool runs a small number of Spectre circuit simulator simulations to construct polynomial models for user-defined performance functions. From the polynomial models, you can get fast and accurate yield estimates and then vary the design parameters to maximize yield.

  PDF Solutions' Circuit Surfer is a statistical analysis software tool for estimating the impact of manufacturing process variations on circuit performance. Once an analog circuit is designed and the outputs are defined in the Cadence Analog Design Environment (ADE), Circuit Surfer is used to simulate how the circuit outputs will vary across chips coming out of the fab due to process variation and design element mismatch. This provides unprecedented levels of accuracy in estimating yield and circuit output variability, which in turn can prevent costly re-designs and time-to-market delays.

• DEF C/C++ Programming Interface

  The C and C++ programming interface is used to read and write Cadence Design Exchange Format (DEF) files.

• LEF C/C++ Programming Interface

  The C and C++ programming interface is used to read and write Cadence Library Exchange Format (LEF) files.

• NeoCell Setup Wizard

  NeoCell, a product developed by Neolinear, enhances efficiency and ease of adoptability into the Cadence IC design solutions by providing rapid design of complex analog, mixed-signal, and SoC's.

  The NeoCell Setup Wizard, a new Cadence tool, streamlines this process. The technology files and data required to run the NeoCell software are specified differently, according to their own formats and syntax, than Cadence DFII technology data. Also, the NeoCell software requires additional data not supplied in a DFII technology file or library and not required by Cadence tools. To run the NeoCell software with existing DFII designs, you must first convert the DFII technology data to NeoCell technology data. Creating NeoCell technology data files by hand from DFII technology data can be a time-consuming process.

• SpectreMDL

  SpectreMDL is a scripting language that controls the Spectre analog simulator and the WaveScan display tool. With SpectreMDL, you can

  • Create measurement aliases that can be easily reused in different circuits

    A measurement alias is a reusable, easily tailored procedure that includes a single analysis statement and a collection of one or more SpectreMDL expressions to be evaluated at runtime.

  • Efficiently run simulations in batch mode

  • Parameterize measurement aliases, making them reusable over various applications

• Stream Manager

  The Stream Manager controls the complexity of multiple product releases and specifies and implements project environments. Project environments can be built from Cadence and third-party products registered in the Stream Manager registry. The Stream Manager registry lets CAD system managers manage multiple streams and stream updates.

  The Cadence Stream Manager package aims to assist CAD systems managers with the problem of managing and maintaining multiple software release streams, project managers with the problem of defining and maintaining a suitable design environment for a particular design project, and designers with the problem of setting their environment to meet the requirements of a particular project.

• WaveScan

  WaveScan, a next-generation waveform display tool that is packaged with the Spectre software, is available as a standalone tool to view waveforms. Calculator functions in WaveScan can operate on waveforms saved by the AMS simulator. It can read PSF data generated inside Cadence Analog Design Environment (ADE) and SST2 data generated in Cadence Analog Mixed-Signal (AMS) Designer. WaveScan helps you analyze the data generated by your simulator. WaveScan consists of the following tools:

  • A Results Browser, which displays signals in the hierarchical arrangement of your design

  • A Graph tool, which helps you represent your simulation data graphically

  • A Table tool for displaying scalar data

  • A Calculator, which uses the language and syntax of SpectreMDL to help you build expressions that address the needs of a wide variety of analysis types

  • Data ranging, which makes it easy to use a very large dataset efficiently by opening just the portion of the dataset you need

Discontinued Products and Tools

• Leapfrog has been discontinued and no Leapfrog integration exists. Verimix PLI is supported with Leapfrog only for the unsupported 3.1 stream.

• VHDL Import and VHDL Co-simulation can be used only with the LDV 3.1 release. IC 5.0 is the last release that will support VHDL Import and VHDL Co-simulation.

• VHDL Import into the Verimix mixed-signal product has been discontinued.

• Communications Manager has been discontinued.

• Design Planning, Place and Route has been discontinued.

• Envisia Ultra Placer has been discontinued.

• Virtuoso Core Optimizer and Virtuoso Core Characterizer has been discontinued.

• Virtuoso Layout Synthesizer has been discontinued.

• Virtuoso Polygon to Symbolic Converter has been discontinued.

1