чем хорош ADS? Опции

[sargein]

на данный момент изучаю вч моделирование схем в cadence (virtuoso ADE, spectre RF)

в какой проге лучше симмулировать вч схемы - с cadence или в ads?

ну и заодно, может кто подскажет хороший мануал по ADS?

Сообщение отредактировал sargein - Mar 16 2010, 09:05

[grujic]

I have tried very few tools other than Cadence tools and ADS. The main reason for this is that most IC foundries provide design kits mainly for Cadence, and some for ADS.
In almost all cases the design kit for physical design (i.e. layout) is exclusive for Cadence tools.

I don't think that all Cadence tools are best-in-class, but they cover the whole spectrum of IC design.

A good indicator of tool quality is foundry support. For example:
TSMC focuses on Mentor Calibre for DRC, LVS and extraction. Cadence Assura support is at best marginal.

Some other foundries provide a complete design kit for Cadence, device models and IC substrate data (needed for EM simulation) for ADS, substrate data for Sonnet and extraction data for Columbus.
From this I'd conclude that Cadence should be used for physical design, Sonnet for EM simulation, Columbus for RLCK lumped extraction and ADS for simulating it all together.
ADS isn't used because it's simulator is the most accurate, but because the environment is well-suited for system, RF and microwave design.
It might sound silly, but ADS data display is much more powerful than Cadence Wavescan. Simple thing as this could make a difference. Design guides and measurement templates are also helpful.

It's a loooong list of tools, and it costs a lot of money, but the foundry is not to blame because there isn't a single EDA tool vendor that has the tool which can do all of the listed tasks.

I haven't tried the tools from small EDA vendors, but I think that it may be risky. It may be a gold mine because they must keep the price low to survive, but it may be a piece of junk. You can never know. Definite proof of quality is when a big company acquires them, and this happens all the time.