News Release from: Ansoft Europe
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 5 April 2002

Signal-integrity software analyses PCBs and ICs

SIwave meets the growing demand for quick and accurate signal- and power-integrity analysis of leading-edge IC packages and PCBs.

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SIwave meets the growing demand for quick and accurate signal- and power-integrity analysis of leading-edge IC packages and PCBs. Unlike other methods, SIwave from Ansoft enables engineers to model entire PCBs and package structures using a full-wave analysis engine to generate both frequency- and time-domain results. SIwave's hybrid, full-wave, finite-element technique allows designers to characterise simultaneous switching noise, power and ground bounce, resonances, reflections, and coupling between traces and power/ground planes.

Furthermore, engineers can combine their own driver/receiver models with SIwave's Spice output to obtain accurate Spice system-level simulations.

"It is imperative that today's high-speed ICs, PCBs, and packages perform as expected", said Dr Zoltan Cendes, Ansoft's Chairman and Chief Technology Officer.

"To better understand the physics of their devices, engineers need an accurate analysis tool.

With SIwave, they can now optimise the power delivery and signal integrity of their designs in a single pass".

SIwave provides a seamless translation from third-party layout tools into the analysis environment.

Because the software employs an integrated design and analysis environment, it allows engineers to make changes and to analyse the impact of those changes.

SIwave, Ansoft's newest edition to its suite of signal-integrity (SI) solutions, analyses complex PCBs and IC packages consisting of multiple, arbitrarily shaped power and ground layers and any number of vias and signal traces.

It's a valuable tool for quickly evaluating decoupling capacitor placement, power and ground bounce, and simultaneous switching noise.

With SIwave, designers can model the following signal-integrity effects: resonance frequencies of complete power and ground structures with or without decoupling capacitors; power and ground bounce; simultaneous switching noise; impedance discontinuities due to changes in signal layers or split supply planes; noise coupling between signal lines and supply planes; time-domain effects, such as propagation delay, rise and fall times, reflections, and ringing; and frequency-domain phenomena, such as resonant modes and S-parameters.

Circuit models providing all of these effects can be output for use in HSpice from Avant!, PSpice from Cadence, or Maxwell Spice from Ansoft.

SIwave will be available for full commercial release in Q2 2002.

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