2012 Cadence Use in the Classroom:

• The Cadence Custom IC Design Suite of tools is extensively used in the EECE 285 VLSI Design class.  The class focuses on integrated circuit design, layout, and verification as well as parasitic elements and their impact on circuit performance.  System-level design experience is gained by completing all design, layout, and functional circuit testing phases of a project.
• The Virtuoso Schematic Editor, Analog Design Environment, and Layout Suite are used.

2012 Cadence Use in Research:

• Ray Blaine and Nick Atkinson are using the Cadence Virtuoso Suite of tools and the Assura Verification Suite to design reliable precision analog/mixed signal circuits for space environment applications.  Ray and Nick have developed test circuits including: operational amplifiers, voltage references, and switched capacitor circuits.
• Ray and Nick have developed many novel implementations to improve the reliability of analog circuits in single-event environments.  One area of significant improvement has been developed for differential input stages, where the resulting single-event transient output is eliminated or greatly reduced.

Traditional Common Centroid layout vs. the more reliable DCC layout

• Multiple publications are pending as a result of this research work.