Wireless Design & Development  Product Releases  Improving MMIC
and RFIC Design Flows Wed, 05/08/2002 - 8:21am   New EDA
technologies like Microwave Office 2002 and new foundry
libraries help to streamline the development of RF and microwave
ICs.  By Ted Miracco, Applied Wave Research, Inc.  In the 1990s,
digital application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designers
experienced a process and productivity revolution that was
brought about by advances in electronic design automation (EDA).
Integrated solutions that included logic synthesis, standard
cell libraries, and advanced place-&-route capabilities enabled
the semiconductor industry to achieve orders of magnitude
increases in productivity that made today's multi-million gate
ASICs and systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) a reality. Unfortunately for
the radio frequency (RF) and microwave design community, high-
frequency analog EDA tools have languished in a relative "stone
age" where productivity and design methodologies have remained
largely unchanged for almost