Smart Power Designs: Reality or Buzz?
We are in a generation where “intelligent” devices are pervasive in our daily lives. We have come to expect them – voice-activated smart mobile platforms, smart home alarm systems, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) for automotive, wearables, the list goes on and on…. The advancements in analogue and mixed-signal ICs designs make these smart devices possible by enabling innovation in key industry application areas – 5G, AI/ML, IoT and Cloud Computing. The accuracy and the performance of the power management function in the ICs are crucial for the optimal performance of smart devices while consuming the least amount of power.
Fueling the innovations behind smart power designs is the Power Management IC (PMIC) engineered by semiconductor design teams for various design applications. As a result, PMICs are central to the operation of devices and systems.
In addition, the advancements in specialized silicon process technologies for power management functions have helped accelerate innovation. One such process is the Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process. It integrates bipolar transistors for precision applications, with CMOS for dense signal processing and DMOS for power handling.
Thoroughly verifying the operation of the PMIC across process variation and environment conditions is crucial to ensure the target design specification is met. However, traditional variation-aware verification solutions have shortcomings.
I encourage you to read the recently published Semiconductor Engineering article “Robust Variation-Aware Smart Power Designs For Silicon Success” to learn more on this topic. It explores PMICs, their role in smart power designs and the variation-aware verification challenges design teams face. Furthermore, the article expands on how Solido Variation Designer using machine learning addresses the variation-aware verification challenges. Thus enabling Smart Power Design teams to meet power, performance, and area (PPA) requirements – to achieve high yield designs.
You can learn more about Solido Variation Designer here!
