Helic Introduces Unique New Features in the VeloceRF Toolset

Helic S.A. announces today the commercial availability of VeloceRF v1.4.2 featuring an enhanced Spiral Wizard. The Spiral Wizard module within VeloceRF can rapidly and efficiently deliver spirals to-order, tailored exactly to the designers requirements in inductance, operating frequency and quality factor. The design process is significantly simplified and accelerated, as it is disentangled from the use of pre-characterized inductor libraries. The tool features on-the-fly layout synthesis, under an extensive set of constraints that make it possible to optimize inductor quality factor, shrink silicon real estate and minimize surrounding interconnect. Available within both schematic and layout environments, the interface is highly intuitive and extremely fast even for complex spiral types such as differential and transformer, the Spiral Wizard will generate a solution in a few seconds.

ATHENS, GREECE December 15, 2004 -- Helic S.A. announces today the commercial availability of VeloceRF v1.4.2 featuring an enhanced Spiral Wizard. The Spiral Wizard module within VeloceRF can rapidly and efficiently deliver spirals to-order, tailored exactly to the designers requirements in inductance, operating frequency and quality factor. The design process is significantly simplified and accelerated, as it is disentangled from the use of pre-characterized inductor libraries. The tool features on-the-fly layout synthesis, under an extensive set of constraints that make it possible to optimize inductor quality factor, shrink silicon real estate and minimize surrounding interconnect. Available within both schematic and layout environments, the interface is highly intuitive and extremely fast even for complex spiral types such as differential and transformer, the Spiral Wizard will generate a solution in a few seconds.

Sotiris Bantas, Helics VP of Technology commented on the new VeloceRF features: Designing and optimizing spiral inductors on silicon has been a painstaking and costly experience, one associated with consecutive silicon spins and several hours of wait with EM simulators. Moreover, the related effort cannot be ported to new silicon processes; moving to a new process with a different metal stack, minimum feature size and grid, means that any spiral optimized at the previous process node will most probably be off in the new one. The Spiral Wizard collectively addresses these problems, bringing a unique use model to the design flow.

The Spiral Wizard is available within VeloceRF and leverages the unique design flow integration characteristics of the rapid EM modeling toolset. Further design benefits can be reaped by exploiting fast and accurate mutual inductance extraction and device-level verification; inductors synthesized by Spiral Wizard can be spaced tightly on the chip layout, leading to additional gains in silicon area and design productivity, while first-pass silicon success is facilitated.

Additional information on VeloceRF is available at: www.helic.com/products/VeloceRF

About Helic (www.helic.com)
Helic S.A. specializes in the development of enabling EDA technologies and multi-standard silicon RF IP for wireless applications. Helics VeloceRF is a powerful EDA tool enabling whole-chip RF simulation for the first time. Helic's PolyRadio transceivers employ an adaptable, low-cost radio architecture that supports multiple wireless bands and connectivity to disparate networks such as GSM and WLAN.

Editorial Contacts:
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