Analog IC designer Cliff Wiener believes he can bring some unique automation capabilities to the custom IC layout environment. Meanwhile, he's come up with a unique way to fund an EDA startup—writing software for travel agencies.
Wiener is founder and president of Get2Spec (Chandler, Ariz.), a custom software development firm launched in 2003 with the primary mission of developing EDA software. Its Analog Rails division made its first public appearance at the recent Design Automation Conference (DAC) with a custom layout environment including schematic entry, layout, built-in design rule checking (DRC) and layout-versus-schematic (LVS), and automated analog routing.
Since the words "automated" and "analog" don't usually belong in the same sentence, automated analog routing is a big promise. But Wiener says Analog Rails will be ready to roll this October with an automated custom design environment that provides a 10-fold speed increase over handcrafted layout. Based on the Open Access database, the offering promises a connectivity-aware, correct-by-construction analog layout with such features as compaction, differential routing and automatic well tap insertion.
Get2Spec, meanwhile, is going into beta sites with a very different product line. That would be Travel Agency Reporting Application (Tara), a report management tool that enables travel agencies and their customers to analyze, monitor and manage travel spending and activity.
"Sellling CAD software takes a very long time," Wiener explained. "A friend of mine knew we had some good programmers and he needed some software to be built, and I needed some cash, so he recommended we work on a project." Today, Wiener said, the self-funded Get2Spec has ten programmers in China and India working on the travel software, and around ten in the U.S. working on the EDA software. He wants the EDA software to be developed in the U.S., he said.
Wiener was in charge of tools and methodologies at Motorola before he started Get2Spec. At Motorola, he said, he became frustrated with analog design tools, spoke with friends in the industry and "we all become confident we could beat what was out there."
Wiener said he was an analog circuit designer in the 1980's. "Then I wanted to learn the Cadence tools because I heard the whole industry was using them for ICs, so I took a job at Cadence because I'm a very impatient guy, and I worked there for three years," he said. Then he was off to National Semiconductor and finally Motorola.
Analog Rails, he noted, has no sales or marketing people. "No one head ever heard of us until DAC," he said. "We were in stealth mode until then. One reason is that we felt we couldn't sell our products because no one was on Open Access, so there was no advantage to announcing ourselves." Companies are just now starting to move to Open Access, he noted, so the time appears to be right.
