industry news
Subscribe Now

Synopsys Unveils IC Validator NXT to Cut Physical Signoff Cycle by 2X

Breakthrough Explorer DRC, Live DRC, and Fusion Technologies Deliver Unparalleled Productivity Gains

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ —

Highlights:

  • Industry-leading scalability to 2000+ cores enables full-chip physical signoff within hours
  • Innovative Explorer DRC technology delivers 5X faster DRC performance during SoC integration
  • IC Validator NXT physical signoff deployed in the cloud on multiple customer tapeouts
  • Faster physical signoff closure driven by Fusion Technology with IC Compiler II and Live DRC with Custom Compiler

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) today announced its next-generation IC Validator NXT physical verification solution that enables design teams to cut their physical signoff cycle by 2X for advanced technology nodes. IC Validator NXT offers unique technology innovations to address increasingly important productivity needs for physical verification engineers. IC Validator NXT’s massively parallel distributed processing architecture and scalability to 2000+ CPUs enables full-chip physical signoff within hours. The new breakthrough Explorer DRC technology offers 5X faster runtime with 5X fewer CPUs and order-of-magnitude debugging speed-up with heatmap for design rule checking (DRC) during chip integration. IC Validator NXT has been successfully deployed in the cloud by multiple customers to meet their aggressive tapeout schedules. IC Validator NXT’s Live DRC technology with Custom Compiler delivers on-the-fly DRC feedback within seconds and enables an interactive design-and-verify flow.

“As designers adopt 7-nanometer and newer technology nodes, physical verification closure within schedule is becoming a major challenge, and tapeout delays can have a significant impact on our customers’ product lifetime revenue and profitability,” said Dan Page, vice president, Design Group at Synopsys. “Our new IC Validator NXT technology innovations deliver breakthrough performance scalability and visualization, and provide designers with the fastest path to production silicon.”

IC Validator, a key component of Synopsys’ Fusion Design Platform, is a comprehensive and highly scalable physical verification tool suite including DRC, LVS, PERC, dummy metal fill, and design-for-manufacturabilty (DFM) enhancement capabilities. IC Validator is architected for high performance and scalability that maximizes utilization of mainstream hardware, using smart memory-aware load scheduling and balancing technologies. It uses both multi-threading and distributed processing over multiple machines to provide scalability benefits that extend to more than two thousand CPUs.

Synopsys customers can learn more about the benefits derived from using Synopsys’ latest IC Validator technology by attending the upcoming Synopsys Users Group (SNUG®) Silicon Valley event on March 20-21, 2019 at the Santa ClaraConvention Center.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) is the Silicon to Software partner for innovative companies developing the electronic products and software applications we rely on every day. As the world’s 15th largest software company, Synopsys has a long history of being a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP and is also growing its leadership in software security and quality solutions. Whether you’re a system-on-chip (SoC) designer creating advanced semiconductors, or a software developer writing applications that require the highest security and quality, Synopsys has the solutions needed to deliver innovative, high-quality, secure products. Learn more at www.synopsys.com.

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
May 6, 2026
Hollywood has struck gold with The Lord of the Rings and Dune'”so which sci-fi and fantasy books should filmmakers tackle next?...

featured paper

Want early design analysis without simulation?

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software

Traditional verification methods are failing today's complex IC designs, which require a proactive, early-stage analysis approach. A shift-left methodology addresses IP block integration challenges and the limitations of traditional simulation and ERC tools. Insight Analyzer detects hard-to-find leakage issues across power domains, enabling early analysis without full simulation. Identify inefficiencies earlier to reduce rework, improve reliability, and enhance power performance.

Click to read more!

featured chalk talk

What’s Driving Zephyr’s Momentum
In this episode of Chalk Talk, Brendon Slade from NXP and Amelia Dalton explore what Zephyr makes unique, how it compares to other RTOS options, and how its design philosophy enables developers to scale from simple prototypes to production-ready systems with confidence.
May 4, 2026
4,494 views