Siemens EDA helps you engineer a smarter future faster, delivering an unmatched portfolio of electronic design automation (EDA) software, hardware, and services. Siemens EDA worked with AWS to test the new Amazon EC2 X2iezn HPC/EDA focused instances with the industry performance and sign-off leader Calibre evaluating advanced node DRC workloads. We were pleased to demonstrate performance improvements of up to 14% using the 4.5 GHz all core turbo frequency of X2iezn instances for all VMs in the run. Additionally, we successfully demonstrated the use of a heterogeneous server configuration using the X2iezn as the primary node and other lower memory VMs for remote compute - providing an 11% speed up and attractive value. These results confirmed the X2iezn is a good fit for primary server EDA workloads for Calibre Physical and Circuit verification applications.

Annapurna Labs, an Amazon company, is the chip development arm of AWS responsible for designing the AWS Nitro System, AWS Graviton processors, AWS Inferentia chips, and AWS Trainium chips. At Annapurna Labs, we have been running machine-learning SoC blocks’ design rule checks using Amazon EC2 X1e and R5d instances. Our testing of the X2iezn instances with Calibre’s Design Rule Checking has shown a 40% faster runtime compared to X1e instances, and a 25% faster runtime over R5d instances. We were able to quickly and easily migrate our workloads to the X2iezn instances and can now test more EDA workloads in a shorter period of time.

NXP Semiconductors, N.V. announced they are moving their EDA to the cloud. Chip design requires extensive simulation and validation, requiring a significant amount of compute power with high frequency processors. We worked with AWS to run our Calibre and Spectre workloads on Amazon EC2 X2iezn instances, which feature the fastest Intel Xeon Scalable processors in the cloud, with an all core turbo frequency of up to 4.5GHz. We measured 10-15% higher performance using X2iezn instances compared to our on-premises, Xeon Gold 6254 with max turbo frequency of 4.0GHz.

Astera Labs, founded in 2017, is a fabless, cloud-based semiconductor company developing purpose-built CXL, PCIe, and Ethernet connectivity solutions for data-centric systems. During the chip design and verification process, Astera Labs believes it is critical to identify potential flaws using simulation tools. That’s what interested Astera Labs in using Amazon EC2 X2iezn instance, which offers an industry-leading all-core turbo frequency of up to 4.5GHz. We were able to see performance gains of up to 25% compared to similar EDA workloads running on R5 instances.

Cadence is a leader in electronic design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to turn concepts into reality. We have been working with AWS to test their new X2iezn instances, which offers an all-core turbo frequency of up to 4.5 GHz. We tested the X2iezn instances using our Pegasus Verification System, which allows designers to run physical verification jobs on the cloud without having to copy any design layout/schematic or foundry rule decks to the cloud and observed a 50% performance improvement over AWS R5 instances. We see X2iezn instances as an excellent environment for testing EDA workloads.

Synopsys customers leverage our tools in the cloud to accelerate delivery of next-generation products. Synopsys IC Validator is one such tool that provides highly scalable high-performance physical verification signoff. On Amazon’s new EC2 X2iezn instances, we achieved 15% performance improvement, scalability to 1000s of cores, and 30% better efficiency using IC Validator’s unique elastic CPU management technology versus R5d instances.