Insight Analyzer

Insight Analyzer is used earlier in the design process than PERC. It operates on a pre-layout netlist, so it performs dynamic, topological, state-based checking, but does not look at geometry. While PERC focuses on devices, Insight Analyzer looks holistically at the "big picture" of the circuit and its functionality. It has automatic recognition to understand structures like logic gates, latches, current mirrors, level shifters, etc, to help it understand the big picture. Insight Analyzer is used by circuit designers, to check their designs before layout. For electrostatic discharge (ESD) checking, we recommend using PERC, but for leakage and high-impedance checks, Insight is recommended. Insight Analyzer is agnostic to the foundry or process node being used.

The typical user is a circuit designer. They’re working early in the design process, pre-layout. A common workflow is to launch Insight Analyzer from their Cadence environment, do setup and run checks and then cross-probe back to their schematic in Virtuoso to investigate the results. Circuit designers will review the results and make changes to the circuit schematic. Typically, a CAD team is also involved in integrating the tool into the company's workflow.

The focus of the Insight tool is leakage and floating gates. It has many checks in many areas. The key checks focus on the 3 areas of leakage: parasitic leakage, analog gate leakage (floating gates) and digital gate leakage (cross-domain floats). Other commonly used checks are for contention and over-voltage/connectivity issues.

Users run the Insight Analyzer on all types of designs and at all levels of hierarchy. The types of issues being checked for will differ depending on the design and level of hierarchy. For example, the tool can check small analog blocks, where a user might be running the Analog Floats check to find high-impedance issues. The tool can check a design at the top of the chip level, where the focus would be on cross-domain issues and power sequencing. The Insight Analyzer has powerful capabilities for checking analog designs but is also used with digital or mixed-signal designs. A lot of development has gone into memory applications, where the tool can find common faults like contention.

The Insight Analyzer tool has a graphical user interface (GUI) with an easy step-by-step setup and a visual interface to run, check and examine results. It can also be run in "batch mode" with a tool command language (Tcl) script. It is easy to move between these modes by saving a project from the GUI to a Tcl run script or loading Tcl code into the GUI. A user workflow can be GUI-based, script-based or a combination of both. Some users run through the GUI the first time for easy setup, save it as a script and run subsequent times from the script.

The Insight Analyzer tool is easy to get started with. It has a GUI interface with a step-by-step setup flow, and the button for each “workflow step” turns green as the user completes it. It’s designed to be used by designers; CAD might set up the initial workflow, especially if there are integrations with other tools like Virtuoso, for example. Then, it’s intended to be self-serve for the designers after that. The checks are built-in (like PERC packaged checks), so there is no need to write custom checks/rules. The Insight application programming interface (API) is very powerful, and some customers do write custom rules using Insight Developer, but even the Tcl API is easy to use.

One of the workflow steps in the Insight Analyzer tool is to set up power rails. The tool will suggest power supply nets with a “topology search” or “name search”. The topology search recognizes possible power rails based on the pin connections on the net, etc. The name search suggests power rails based on common net names such as “VDD.” The user can also search for any net name or partial name.

Insight Developer enables custom check development and check modifications. Signed checks can be run in Insight Analyzer.