Cadence, Agilent Intro Design Tool

NEW ORLEANS -- Cadence Design Systems Inc. (NYSE: CDN) and Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE A) today announced a new solution to help enable design engineers to shorten product development time, lower design costs and focus on creating innovative communications products. The fusion of the two companies' technologies, the Agilent RF Design Environment (RFDE), is the first product to result from the alliance the two companies formed last February. The Agilent RFDE is an RF (radio frequency) EDA (electronic design automation) software platform that tightly integrates Agilent's leading RF simulation technologies into the Cadence industry-standard analog/mixed signal design flow framework. This combination is expected to reduce the development time required for large-scale RF/mixed-signal ICs used in wireless and wireline appliances. As today's wireless and wireline applications increase in frequency and speed to 2.4 GHz, 40 Gb and beyond, analog and RF engineers using time-domain tools need access to higher-frequency simulation technology. RFDE integrates Agilent's frequency-domain simulation technologies into the Cadence Analog Design Environment, providing the ability to simulate critical RF specifications with dramatic speed, accuracy and efficiency improvements. "Analog designers are doing more and more RF/high-speed design," said Naotoshi Higashiyama, expert, Analog IC Development, NEC Compound Semiconductor Devices. "Frequency-domain technology, like that provided by RFDE, is needed in addition to time-domain/mixed signal simulation technology." RFDE is also the first step toward a unified simulation environment that covers both frequency-domain and time-domain simulations, giving users the ability to perform cross-domain verification with both Agilent's frequency-domain simulators and Cadence's time-domain Spectre RF product. The fusion of RF and analog/mixed-signal IC design flow methodologies enables engineers to shorten product development time, lower design costs and focus on creating innovative products. Cadence Design Systems Inc. Agilent Technologies Inc.