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AWR
SI 2005 Design Suite
by Applied Wave Research
Electronic design automation (EDA) has evolved
over the past 20 years as isolated activities for each piece
of a design. It has been common practice to separate the
electrical design/analysis from the physical implementation
domains at both the integrated circuit (IC) and package/module
and printed circuit board (PCB) levels. EDA vendors have
developed closed methodologies and tool sets for different
design phases, requiring manual hand-offs and multiple iteration
loops that can result in costly errors and delays. The complexity
of today's new technologies, however, bridges these traditional
domains and renders traditional design methods inadequate
in terms of accuracy, efficiency, and cost. An entirely
new EDA approach is required in order to ensure complete
design closure between different design phases.
The challenge for high-performance product design teams
today is that all these design phases are isolated by separate
EDA design and analysis environments, incompatible databases
and point tools, and models that are not designed for gigahertz
frequencies. Many high-frequency circuit impairments and
signal integrity issues, such as delay, noise, distortion,
and impedance mismatch, are ignored when signal paths cross
the chip, package, and module/PCB boundaries. Separate EDA
environments and databases prevent designers from performing
signal integrity (SI) analysis early in the design cycle,
where it is most critical.
The SI 2005T design suite from Applied Wave
Research (AWR®) is a new and highly integrated co-chip/package/module
EDA solution developed specifically to address the complex
cross-domain signal integrity issues inherent in the design
of next-generation, high-performance/high-frequency products.
The new solution is architected from the ground up, incorporating
a unified data model (UDM) to ensure complete design closure
between IC, package, module, and printed circuit board (PCB)
design phases. The unique AWR Design EnvironmentT technology
encompasses all of these domains, and the data model is
high-frequency aware, permitting accurate extraction and
modeling of all design elements, including active and passive
devices as well as interconnects at high frequency. The
new solution is built on an open, standards-based software
platform, enabling easy integration of the most capable,
best-in-class tools to capture, synthesize, simulate, optimize,
layout, extract, and verify designs in all domains.
The SI analysis capability can be applied to a wide variety
of design and simulation tasks, including the study of coupled
lines, evaluation of electromagnetic (EM) fields radiating
into free space, analysis of dielectric losses, three-dimensional
modeling of thru-wafer vias in ICs or plated through-holes
in modules and PCBs, and investigation of the effects of
losses due to metal skin effects. Most metal skin-effect
models assume that the metal has infinite thickness with
losses that are constant with frequency. The AWR SI 2005
design suite can model device metal layers with finite thickness,
calculating metal resistance as a function of frequency.
The software can also accurately model dielectric losses.
Conventional tools assume constant relative permittivity
for a dielectric loss model, with constant loss tangent.
The AWR SI 2005 design suite features dielectric models
with loss tangent and permittivity that vary as functions
of frequency.
Many of today's device and module solutions include mixed-signal
formats, and the AWR SI 2005 software is specifically designed
to accurately model the second-order effects of layouts,
interconnections, and packages on ultimate performance.
In contrast to separate design and analysis solutions, the
AWR SI 2005 design suite brings all design domains into
a single platform, allowing easy movement and design/analysis
flow between ICs, modules, packages, and PCBs. It allows
designers to simultaneously examine such disparate technologies
as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and silicon ICs, multilayer PCBs,
and low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) modules within
a common environment. The software can generate a wide range
of result formats, including S-parameter data, bit-error-rate
(BER) plots, eye diagrams, error-vector-magnitude (EVM)
plots, adjacent-channel-power-ratio (ACPR) plots, and in-phase/quadrature
(I/Q) scatter plots.
Interconnect-driven design with iNet
technology
The AWR SI 2005 design suite provides comprehensive SI analysis
capabilities as part of its breakthrough Analog OfficeT
Intelligent NetT (iNet) technology. The iNet technology
is based on accurate top-down and bottom-up interconnection
and radio-frequency (RF)/microwave modeling methodologies
that streamline and simplify the design process and support
model extraction on complex cross-domain interconnections.
Gigahertz broadband SI issues are difficult
to tackle because they cross so many boundaries. Because
of the complex interactions of many effects, AWR SI 2005
design suite approaches the problem in two completely new
ways. First, the product enables interconnects to be designed
in a top-down process and, second, it provides procedures
in this process for exploring the depth and breadth of SI
issues. The first task is accomplished by incorporating
AWR's industry-leading RF/microwave technology at the core
of the software. Using the AWR Design Environment unified
data model, interconnects can be defined at the circuit
level and then manipulated through multiple representations
as the problem solution evolves: layout, EM, extraction,
system, etc. This is combined with AWR's X-models-3D EM
model accuracy with the speed of circuit models-and integration
to the PCB tools that couple with this top-down flow and
allow SI physical information to be brought back into the
interconnect design subflow.
The second task is accomplished using the AWR Design Environment
technology. Through the unified data model, all manifestations
of the interconnect-circuit, layout, EM, extracted, system,
etc.-are simultaneously represented and available. SI engineers
can switch "views" of the interconnect, without the need
for translations, loss of information, and desynchronization
of the database. Furthermore, the AWR Design Environment
open architecture enables the SI designer to use multiple,
complementary tools for the same task to bring the best
approach to bear on the problem.
Industrial Strength EMSight
The typical RF/microwave approach to SI design problems
is to put the whole PCB or module into a three-dimensional
(3D) EM solver and wait for a week to get an answer. This
approach has gained in popularity because 3D EM solvers
can be shown to provide compelling accuracy for some of
the toughest SI problems. The problem with this approach
is that all the engineer gets is "go/no-go" answers. If
the EM solver does not crash and a solution is returned,
the jumble of coupling data is difficult or impossible to
pick apart in order to discern the primary and secondary
physical mechanisms at the root of the SI problem for that
design. 3D EM, and all EM methods, have value in specific
subsets of the SI problem and are valuable tools in unraveling
SI issues. However, it is rare, when putting an entire 12-layer
LTCC into an EM solver, that it will yield the root cause
of SI problems. Where other SI/EM solutions crash, the AWR
EMSightT technology in the SI 2005 design suite succeeds.
The matrix solvers have increased capacity, which eliminates
the memory limitations of previous versions (typical limit
of 8000 unknowns in 1GB of RAM). Now, problems can be solved
with 50,000+ unknowns in 512MB of RAM using dense out of
core direct matrix solvers - there are no practical limits.
Support for multiple EM simulation and analysis
tools
AWR SI 2005 design suite offers the broadest range of EM
solvers, all with their own strengths when it comes to tough
SI problems, which can be used to partition the problem
and get accurate answers. SI solutions available today are
generally based on technology developed for SI issues at
a few hundred MHz. These solutions "hit the wall" when distributed
coupling and broadband considerations come into play in
applications approaching and above 1 GHz, where significant
signal energy may be found well in excess of 10GHz. For
these highest-performance designs, interconnects are best-modeled
in the frequency-domain with EM or EM-based models. The
AWR SI 2005 design suite supports multiple technologies
for traditional bottom up SI as well as top-down interconnect
design in all design domains. The software package includes
all the features of AWR's RF/microwave design software:
concurrent design, logical/physical design, EM table-based
models, and EM SocketT open integration. For the first time,
engineers can design interconnects as well as analyze them.
The software builds on AWR's proven, industry-leading interconnect
modeling and simulation technology by adding time-domain
simulation and a closed-loop flow with major PCB tools.
Through AWR's EM SocketT open standard interface, the SI
2005 design suite users can access a broad variety of EM
simulators from leading vendors, without leaving the SI
design environment. The underlying technology can interface
with virtually any EM simulator and seamlessly integrates
third-party design tools into the SI design flow. Users
can combine multiple EM algorithms, such as finite element
analysis, finite difference time domain (FDTD), and a variety
of method-of-moments approaches to solve planar and full
3D problems. The solution facilitates greater flexibility
in the design methodology, while providing a common user
interface.
Signals: internally or test-generated, IBIS, or
MatLab co-simulation
As clock rates and signal speeds increase, designers have
found that a simple current source is insufficient to model
the complexities of fast, leading-edge signals, variable
fan-outs, dense interconnects, and complex loads and receivers.
The SI 2005 design suite supports several ways of generating
signals for SI design and analysis. The simplest way is
to use the internal frequency- and time-domain sources.
By adding on AWR's TestWaveT software, signals can be acquired
and used directly from test equipment or from the designer's
own device hardware. IBIS is also supported and, if models
are available in MatLab, AWR's Visual System SimulatorT
(VSS) system simulation tool co-simulates with MatLab to
bring the signals right into the AWR Design Environment
platform, where trade-offs can be made in real time.
Flows into industry-popular third-party tools
The ability to design interconnects as part of a top-down,
SI flow is unique. SI design suite offers a truly useable
design flow by creating a closed-loop flow to popular, enterprise
PCB tools. Schematics and layouts can be exported to Mentor
Graphics' Board Station or Expedition using libraries and
footprints automatically generated from Mentor's PCB tools,
LMS, or DMS, and can continue in the enterprise PCB flow
for bill-of-materials (BOM) generation, routing, and design-for-manufacturing
(DFM). High-speed, multi-level traces of interest can be
brought back into the SI 2005 design suite and analyzed
as-is or with user-selectable adjacent metal.
Integrated with Synopsys' HSPICE for fast and accurate
simulations
AWR's frequency-domain engines are included in the AWR SI
2005 design suite, and are integrated with Synopsys' gold
standard HSPICE software, providing the fastest, most accurate,
highest capacity simulations, as well as hundreds of foundry-proven
built-in device models for most commercial IC foundries.
Pricing and Availability
The AWR SI 2005 design suite is available as a stand-alone
product for new users or as an upgrade to existing Analog
OfficeT and Microwave Office® design users. It is available
for Linux and Windows XP operating systems on the personal
computer. P&A: $15,750 and up; stock.
APPLIED WAVE RESEARCH
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