Simulation Using Hybrid SAAS & PAAS Cloud Compute

High level architecture of a hybrid on-premise and off-premise/cloud SAAS/PAAS solution.

Simulation of very large IC designs can take weeks of compute time to complete. In order to speed up simulations, the IT department usually have to invest in either newer machines, increase RAM on existing machines, try to utilize multi-core processing (on software that supports multi-threading), faster storage, or faster networking I/O. But once the project is over, the IT investment will sit idle until the next phase of the project, or until the next project. With the advent of cloud computing, simulation of IC designs can be sped up greatly without the upfront IT cost. Instead of investing in IT equipment that will be only used during burst modes, cloud computing allows compute/storage/networking to be rented as needed. 

To protect IP in a cloud/SAAS environment, the simulation binaries can be designed to obfuscate the original design. Measures are incorporated to ensure that a break during the simulation run does not reveal design source. The output of the simulation run such as waveform, db, and log are obfuscated as well and are passed back to on-premise for debug and analysis.

This hybrid on-premise/off-premise approach can leverage cloud/SAAS for great simulation speed-up while enabling sensitive debug and analysis on on-premise.