Cadence Design Systems > Case Studies > Fuji Electric's Accelerated Power IC Design with Cadence Solutions

Fuji Electric's Accelerated Power IC Design with Cadence Solutions

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
Robots - Parallel Robots

Applicable Industries

Automotive
Electrical Grids

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Digital Twin
Virtual Reality

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

Fuji Electric (FE) is a global company based in Japan that supplies advanced, innovative power device and power modules. These products are designed to save energy while offering high performance, downsizing, and high reliability to the new energy, green Internet Data Center (IDC), and automotive markets. With the growth of new energy sectors, such as wind power and mega solar, FE’s large-capacity modules are gaining popularity. The company has a wide range of products with insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules that include up to 3,300 volts for maximum rated voltage and up to 3,600 amps for maximum rated current. These high-speed IGBTs offer fast switching to enhance high-efficiency equipment.

The Challenge

Fuji Electric (FE), a global company based in Japan, was faced with the challenge of developing a new driver IC for its power modules and power ICs. The company needed a control function that could meet the specifications of a new power-management system. The design team had to explore a new control algorithm, including the design concept for the new power-management system. The IC would need to support many functions, such as a protection function to stop the system in case of unusual conditions, such as high or low voltage during a lightning storm. The aggressive time-to-market requirements for this new low-power, low-noise, low-cost power-supply IC added to the complexity of the task. The team also needed to increase the efficiency of the concept design and manage complex verification items.

The Solution

To improve the efficiency of its concept design, the FE design team decided to use Verilog-A for this project. They adopted Cadence® Virtuoso® Accelerated Parallel Simulator, part of Virtuoso Multi-Mode Simulation, to develop the driver IC for its power modules and power ICs. This simulator performs advanced, SPICE-accurate simulation for faster convergence on design goals while offering scalable performance and capacity. It’s tightly integrated with the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment, which enables FE engineers to capture and pass design intent in the same environment, and it provides all the transistor-level analysis capabilities of Virtuoso Spectre® Circuit Simulator. The simulator’s proprietary full-matrix–solving technology delivers unparalleled scalability and multithreading capability using modern multi-core compute platforms, ensuring precise simulation without sacrificing accuracy of results.

Operational Impact

The adoption of Cadence® Virtuoso® Accelerated Parallel Simulator significantly improved the efficiency of Fuji Electric's verification environment for a device-level power-management system. The solution allowed the team to meet their aggressive time-to-market goals without sacrificing the quality of the product. The team was able to manage complex verification items more efficiently, leading to a 26x improvement in verification performance. The simulator's advanced, SPICE-accurate simulation also led to a 2x improvement in simulation performance. In the future, the team plans to continue working with Cadence solutions and is discussing a completely automated migration to take the team’s efficiency improvements to the next level.

Quantitative Benefit