Case Study: IDT‑Newave cuts semiconductor design time by months with MathWorks

IDT-Newave Reduces Semiconductor Design Time by Months

IDT-Newave, a Shanghai–based mixed‑signal semiconductor developer of voiceband CODECs, line equalizers, and PLLs, faced long development cycles and poor collaboration between system and circuit designers—particularly time‑consuming manual filter quantization and RTL verification. To bridge system models to hardware and speed releases, they adopted MathWorks’ Model‑Based Design tools, including MATLAB, Simulink, DSP System Toolbox, Fixed‑Point Designer, Control System Toolbox, Communications Toolbox, and MATLAB Compiler.

Using MathWorks to create integrated system‑level models, run floating‑ and fixed‑point simulations, convert and co‑simulate Verilog, and build analysis GUIs, IDT-Newave cut mixed‑signal simulation time from days to about 30 minutes, identified algorithm flaws in one month instead of an estimated five, and achieved roughly three times the design efficiency. MathWorks’ workflow also enabled reuse of models across product generations, reducing redesign effort and accelerating time to market.

IDT-Newave

Liu Xin

Staff Design Engineer