Cadence Revolutionizes System Design with Optimality Explorer

Cadence Revolutionizes System Design with Optimality Explorer for AI-Driven Electronic System Optimization

Leverage breakthrough technology to optimize designs 10 times faster on average than traditional methods

Key points

• Multi-physics analysis and optimization to accelerate the time to market of electronic systems and reduce design risks

• AI-driven optimization helps quickly and efficiently explore the design space to achieve the best electrical design performance

• Optimality Explorer uses AI technology similar to that used in chip design in Cadence Cerebrus for system design

• Clarity 3D Solver and Sigrity X signal and power integrity technologies are the first Cadence design-synchronous multiphysics analysis solutions to support Optimality Explorer

Shanghai, China, June 9, 2022 - Cadence Design Systems , Inc. (Cadence) today announced the launch of Cadence® Optimality™ Intelligent System Explorer, enabling multidisciplinary analysis and optimization (MDAO) of electronic systems. After revolutionizing simulation technology and delivering products with breakthrough performance and accuracy, Cadence has focused on optimization, pioneering the disruptive Cadence Cerebrus™ Intelligent Chip Explorer, and now Cadence has launched Optimality Explorer. Optimality Explorer uses AI technology similar to that used in Cadence Cerebrus to achieve breakthrough results, optimizing designs at an average speed of 10 times faster than traditional manual operations, and even up to 100 times faster on some designs. Optimality Explorer further consolidates Cadence's leadership in system analysis, bringing an AI-driven, MDAO-enabled design-synchronous multi-physics system analysis solution to the market, which is an industry first.

The Cadence Clarity™ 3D Solver for 3D electromagnetic (EM) analysis and Sigrity™ X technology for high-speed signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) analysis are the first Cadence multiphysics system analysis software products to support Optimality Explorer. With Optimality Explorer, Clarity and Sigrity X solvers can significantly improve designer productivity and efficiency, enabling design teams to explore the entire design space and converge on the optimal design quickly and efficiently.

Optimality Intelligent System Explorer provides the following benefits:

• Design Insights: Helps designers quickly determine the best electrical performance, avoid suboptimal local minima and maxima, and map variations to consider more scenarios and explore the full design space

• Improved productivity: Helps design engineers and teams optimize system-level designs effectively, increasing productivity by 10 times compared to manual comparison of parameter tables, and up to 100 times faster on some designs

• Easy-to-use interface: Flexible usage model allows customers to quickly invoke MDAO by activating Optimality Explorer from within Clarity and Sigrity X environments

• Scalable solution: Allows customers to extend AI-driven optimization across Cadence’s multiphysics technologies to create a comprehensive computational software solution spanning simulation, optimization and signoff

“For years, system-level optimization has been inefficient based on a labor-intensive workflow of design/prototype/test/optimize and ultimately manufacturing,” said Ben Gu, vice president of R&D for the Multiphysics System Analysis Group at Cadence. “With the MDAO capabilities provided by Optimality Explorer, system-level optimization from IC to package, PCB and system is dramatically faster and with Cadence’s signature gold-standard accuracy.”

Customer feedback

“In high-speed package design, optimizing the design before tapeout is a highly effective process. For our DDR package optimization process, Cadence provided the Clarity 3D Solver with Optimality Explorer to help us find the best parameter configuration to meet the design criteria within a significantly shortened time window, thus accelerating our time to market while enabling us to deliver a higher performance solution.”

-Alan Zhu, Vice President of Hardware at Ambarella

“In our next-generation Kunlun AI chip project, Clarity 3D Solver provides unparalleled speed and capabilities with the same outstanding accuracy. We use Clarity 3D Solver for high-speed channel modeling and optimization. Now, with Cadence’s Optimality Explorer, we have reduced the time required to optimize transmission line performance from hours to minutes. Compared with previous methods, we can adjust the physical parameters of high-speed differential pair routing constraints faster. The time saved can be used to optimize other parts of the design to ensure that all critical interfaces can operate at optimal performance.”

-Canghai Gu, Chief Chip Architect of Baidu Kunlun Core

“MediaTek is a leader in SerDes design technology. In our recent 112G PAM4 SerDes project, Cadence’s Optimality Explorer and Clarity 3D Solver helped us achieve a 75% performance improvement. Cadence provided breakthrough AI-driven optimization, allowing us to quickly and efficiently determine the optimal return loss and insertion loss, as well as TDR waveforms, accelerating the design team’s productivity and successfully completing the final product.”

-Aaron Yang and Howard Yin, Design Directors at MediaTek

“We were an early adopter of the Cadence Optimality Intelligent System Explorer and saw great performance on rigid-flex PCBs with multiple via structures and transmission lines. Optimality Explorer’s AI-driven optimization allowed us to discover novel designs and approaches that we could not have achieved with other tools. Optimality Explorer adds intelligence to the already powerful Clarity 3D Solver, helping us reach our performance goals faster.”

-Kyle Chen, Principal Hardware Engineer at Microsoft

Price and Release Date

Optimality Intelligent System Explorer is available now in early access to select customers. General availability is expected in Q4 2022 .