Agilent Technologies’ Advanced Design System EDA Software Chosen by Inphi for Memory Interface Chip Design

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that Inphi Corp. has selected Agilent’s Advanced Design System (ADS) software for the design of their commercially available DDR3 memory interface chip.

“We have had many experiences where a traditional SPICE tool was used in the distributed-circuit arena and produced nonphysical results -- ones that raise more questions than the simulation was intended to solve,” said Ramanan Thiagarajah, product line manager with Inphi Corp. “We turned to ADS to resolve the issue.”

Agilent’s Advanced Design System is an industry-leading high-frequency, high-speed electronic design automation software platform. Recent releases of the software include breakthrough signal integrity capabilities, such as the addition of serializer/deserializer (SERDES)/Verilog analog mixed-signal co-simulation for today’s most complete signal integrity design flow for serial links.

“The greatest joy in my job is seeing customers like Inphi being successful with our tools,” said Colin Warwick, product marketing manager with Agilent’s EEsof EDA division. “We work very hard to make the products appropriate to the task and as accurate as possible. It’s very gratifying to actually see the simulation and measurements overlay with such precision.”

Inphi is a leading provider of memory interface chips. The Memory Interface Logic chip contains a phase-locked loop, decode logic and buffer logic running at 1.6Gbps/pin in a 176 BGA package, and is used inside a DDR3-1600 Registered Dual In-Line Memory Module (RDIMM). The chip acts as an interface between the host controller, typically a microprocessor from Intel or AMD, and the Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips inside the module. In turn, the modules are used inside high-end servers for the Internet and other data-communications and data-processing systems.