Kelly Perry, vice president of marketing for the Virtuoso platform, said Cadence has ironed out integration issues and tied all analog and mixed-signal technologies together to offer designers a single environment for integrating analog and digital blocks on a system-on-chip.

Designers, especially analog designers, have traditionally developed their own flows using best-in-class point tools from different vendors. Cadence has provided a large majority of these tools for years, Perry said. Their integration into a cohesive platform simplifies and speeds the design process, and ensures that users don't have to iron out tool interoperability issues on their own, he said.

The new platform also boasts a bidirectional integration path to and from the Cadence Encounter digital IC design platform through the OpenAccess database.The platform includes the latest version of the Virtuoso Chip Editor.

Cadence said that adoption of the Virtuoso flow will shorten physical-design integration from one month to approximately two weeks in a typical advanced mixed-signal design with more than 1.5 million transistors. The company also claims a 10x productivity improvement over a point tool flow.

To facilitate the platform's adoption, Cadence has put together a reference design of an Ethernet switch, an associated fab-independent process design kit and a step-by-step tutorial on how the reference analog/mixed-signal design was assembled using Virtuoso.

The company will offer free half-day workshops this month to explain how to use the Virtuoso platform and the Virtuoso Chip Editor. More training is available for a fee.