Pearl Semi selects Siemens' Symphony AMS platform for its novel low-noise digital PLL design

Plano, Texas, USA -- January 27, 2022 -- Siemens Digital Industries Software has announced that Pearl Semiconductor, a fabless semiconductor company specializing in high-performance timing products, used Siemens‘ Symphony™ Mixed-Signal Platform for developing and verifying its newest ultra-low noise digital phased locked loop (PLL) design, which targets a range of demanding applications such as high-speed connectivity, high bandwidth video broadcasting and 5G infrastructure markets.

Leveraging the fast simulation performance of Siemens‘ Symphony Mixed-Signal Platform, Pearl Semiconductor rapidly achieved silicon-accurate simulation for its latest PLL offering, while boosting functional verification cycles by 4x. This dramatic acceleration helped Pearl achieve aggressive time-to-market objectives.

“With the exponential rise of data due to digitization, the need for a worldwide upgrade of bandwidth and data network infrastructure is happening at a rapid pace,“ said Mohamed Dessouky, vice president of engineering for Pearl Semiconductor. “High-performance timing solutions like our latest PLL offering play a key role in increasing bandwidth for network ICs. Our novel PLL architecture continuously suppresses spurs, while minimizing the noise contribution of active circuitry within the PLL bandwidth. Designing these complex circuits requires a robust mixed-signal verification solution, and this is why we selected Siemens’s Symphony Mixed-Signal Platform for extensive mixed-signal verification of our PLL designs The flexibility of Symphony to work with our mixed-signal use cases and the tool’s ease-of-use resulted in wider adoption across our verification teams and resulted in 4X productivity improvment.”

Powered by Siemens’ Analog FastSPICE (AFS) technology, the Symphony Mixed-Signal Platform combines the leading foundry-certified circuit simulator with industry-standard hardware description language (HDL) simulators to provide fast and accurate verification of complex nanometer-scale mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs). The platform’s modular architecture leverages Siemens‘ AFS circuit simulator software to provide exceptionally fast mixed-signal simulation performance with nanometer-scale SPICE accuracy and compatibility with all leading digital solvers, including Siemens‘ Questa™ functional verification tool family.

"The need for ultra low-noise high bandwidth timing solutions is becoming critical in many applications, and mixed-signal innovations such as Pearl's DSP+analog-based solutions are critical to meet those requirements," said Ravi Subramanian, senior vice president and general manager for the IC Verification Solutions Division at Siemens Digital Industries Software."We are pleased that our Analog FastSPICE and Symphony Mixed Signal Platforms played a key role in Pearl’s development of their latest ultra-low noise digital PLL design.“

To learn more about Siemens Symphony Mixed-Signal Platform, please visit: https://eda.sw.siemens.com/en-US/ic/symphony/

To learn more about Siemens Analog FastSPICE Platform, please visit: https://eda.sw.siemens.com/en-US/ic/analog-fastspice/

Siemens Digital Industries Software is driving transformation to enable a digital enterprise where engineering, manufacturing and electronics design meet tomorrow. The Xcelerator portfolio helps companies of all sizes create and leverage digital twins that provide organizations with new insights, opportunities and levels of automation to drive innovation. For more information on Siemens Digital Industries Software products and services, visit siemens.com/software or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Siemens Digital Industries Software – Where today meets tomorrow.

Siemens Digital Industries (DI) is an innovation leader in automation and digitalization. Closely collaborating with partners and customers, DI drives the digital transformation in the process and discrete industries. With its Digital Enterprise portfolio, DI provides companies of all sizes with an end-to-end set of products, solutions and services to integrate and digitalize the entire value chain. Optimized for the specific needs of each industry, DI’s unique portfolio supports customers to achieve greater productivity and flexibility. DI is constantly adding innovations to its portfolio to integrate cutting-edge future technologies. Siemens Digital Industries has its global headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, and has around 76,000 employees internationally.

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich) is a technology company focused on industry, infrastructure, transport, and healthcare. From more resource-efficient factories, resilient supply chains, and smarter buildings and grids, to cleaner and more comfortable transportation as well as advanced healthcare, the company creates technology with purpose adding real value for customers. By combining the real and the digital worlds, Siemens empowers its customers to transform their industries and markets, helping them to transform the everyday for billions of people. Siemens also owns a majority stake in the publicly listed company Siemens Healthineers, a globally leading medical technology provider shaping the future of healthcare. In addition, Siemens holds a minority stake in Siemens Energy, a global leader in the transmission and generation of electrical power.

In fiscal 2021, which ended on September 30, 2021, the Siemens Group generated revenue of €62.3 billion and net income of €6.7 billion. As of September 30, 2021, the company had around 303,000 employees worldwide. Further information is available on the Internet at www.siemens.com.