Magma claims parallel fast Spice
AROMAS, Calif. — Magma Design Automation has announced the availability of the FineSim Pro Parallel Manager, claimed to be the first parallel fast Spice capability. Based on Magma's Native Parallel Technology, the offering is aimed at the verification of large mixed-signal systems on chip.
The FineSim Pro Parallel Manager augments FineSim Pro, a transistor-level circuit simulator that Magma introduced last July. It was the first product to result from Magma's Nov. 2005 acquisition of ACAD Corp. Magma said at that time that FineSim Pro runs three to five times faster than other Spice simulators due to algorithmic improvements.
FineSim Pro includes three modes — Spice, fast Spice, and "hyper" Spice. Initially, only the Spice mode was parallelized, said Suk Lee, general manager for Magma's custom design business unit. That offering was released in September as FineSim Spice.
In September, Magma claimed that FineSim Spice can be parallelized over multiple processors for linear speedup and higher capacity. What's new now, said Lee, is that all three modes can be parallelized, including fast Spice.
Magma's FineSim Pro Parallel Manager can run the simulator over distributed networks, or multiple-CPU workstations. Lee said there's no limit to the number of nodes, and that Magma has run FineSim on as many as 40 CPUs. The company claims speed advantages of an order of magnitude compared to other fast Spice simulators.
The FineSim Pro Parallel Manager is available now for production use. FineSim Pro can run within Magma's RTL-to-GDSII suite, or as a standalone simulator.
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