Electromagnetic simulator links to HSpice

Electromagnetic simulator links to HSpice
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Offering a co-simulation capability for PCB and IC package design, Sigrity Inc. is announcing that its Speed2000 electrical analysis software now runs with Synopsys' HSpice analog simulator in a single environment. Speed2000 is a full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation tool.

Speed2000 is used to analyze power delivery systems and signal integrity in high-density IC packages and high-speed PCBs. It lets users characterize and optimize the effectiveness of power and ground planes and distributed decoupling capacitors; avoid self-resonance in or between circuits, packages, and boards; identify and minimize the effects of signal return path discontinuities and simultaneous switching noise; and predict EM radiation from packages and boards.

HSpice is a widely-used, Spice-based simulator for IC design. The Sigrity co-simulation capability lets designers bring HSpice foundry-certified device models into signal-integrity analysis.

The Speed2000 and HSpice co-simulation solution will be available for production release by the end of March 2004. Speed2000 runs on Windows platforms, whereas HSpice supports Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX. The two simulators can run concurrently on different platforms.