Ulkasemi and Designer’s Guide Consulting, Inc. have teamed together to provide a comprehensive analog and mixed-signal verification solution for analog and mixed-signal designs. The focus of our solution is a specification driven approach to catch all bugs in the analog schematics, in the analog-digital interface, and in the digital and embedded software that talks to the analog. As a means to this end, part of the solution includes developing behavior models for all of the analog components, and unique to our approach is the development of block-level self-checking regression tests that validate that the behavioral models written are functionally equivalent to the analog schematics. Without this key critical step, one can never be certain that the verification at the chip level reflects what’s going on in the analog schematics. The analog specification driven approach coupled with the use of a unique piece of patented electronic design automation software ensures better coverage and greatly increases our efficiency. From an analog block-level specification, this software automatically generates functional models and the regression tests that validate the models match the schematics.

Our approach is generally applicable to all analog/mixed-signal designs. These include power management ICs, high speed serial-deserializers, audio, RF, touch screen, and automotive. This solution is also applicable at the IP and block level for almost all general analog building blocks– ADCs, DACs, PLLs, PGAs, Amplifiers, Filters, Test Circuitry, etc.

Through years of experience, we have developed a structured yet flexible approach to analog/mixed-signal verification. This is both on the technical side and on how we jointly partner with you to get the job done. We will work with you to customize this approach to best suit your needs. On the working relationship we can do all of the work or work with you jointly. Designer’s Guide Consulting, Inc. provides training classes on analog/mixed-signal in case your engineers are not familiar with analog/mixed-signal verification. We can support any/all phases of verification– verification planning, analog block-level model development, and chip-level verification.

With our team of analog/mixed-signal verification engineers and with our specification driven approach, we can quickly get started in verifying your chips. The specification driven approach allows your analog designers to work with us on a day to day level in a far more effective and efficient way compared to what is typically done– passing hand written, often ambiguous datasheets back/forth, asking designers to look at models that they might not be able to understand without a modeling background, or asking designers to do extra work such as running simulations to validate that the models match the analog schematics.