Thorough variation-aware verification: proving vital for modern power-efficient designs
Recently the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) awarded STMicroelectronics the “IEEE Milestone for Multiple Silicon Technologies on a Chip” for its innovation of the BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) process technology. This prestigious award highlights a significant milestone in the history of technology innovation and advancement, particularly for applications requiring power-efficient designs.
The BCD technology is a family of silicon processes onto a single chip: Bipolar for precise analog functions, CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) for digital design and DMOS (Double Diffused Metal Oxide Semiconductor) for electrical power and high voltage applications. It makes possible the reliable coexistence of low-voltage control circuits and high-voltage DMOS stages with typical voltage capability in the 100s of volts.
Furthermore, BCD technology has enabled innovation and development of power-efficient applications, including automotive, wearables, hard disk drives and mobile computing. The industry trend is showing that BCD technology will further drive innovation for renewable energy design applications.
The precise operation of these power-efficient designs is critical to ensure the successful operation of the end applications: demanding thorough high-sigma verification that accounts for all potential design variations on the silicon. Running 10s of millions to billions of traditional brute force Monte Carlo simulations to achieve high-sigma designs is not feasible. Design development teams continue to consider and deploy advanced verification approaches and methodologies to meet design and power-efficiency specifications.
We invite you to explore the white paper on “Robust bandgap circuit design enabled with a fast and accurate variation-aware verification”. It discusses how the Smart Power team at STMicroelectronics addressed their requirement for a thorough variation-aware verification using Solido Variation Designer- a key ingredient to achieving a robust design using BCD technology for hard disk drive applications.
To learn more about Solido Variation Designer, please go here.
