ADS Redefines Signal Integrity and Power Integrity Analysis with New Cohesive Workflow

Highlights:

• ADS EDA software provides industry-leading channel simulation technology for analysis of high-speed serial links and memory systems
• Includes innovative EM-technology (Electromagnetic) within a cohesive workflow for SI and PI design tasks
• SIPro solution provides speed and accuracy for EM characterization of high-speed links on densely-routed, highly complex printed circuit boards
• PIPro solution adds three new specialized simulation engines for power integrity

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — January 7, 2016 — Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS) today announced the launch of two electromagnetic (EM) software solutions designed to help signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) engineers improve high-speed link performance in printed circuit board (PCB) designs. The solutions – SIPro and PIPro – will be available in the newest release of Keysight EEsof EDA’s Advanced Design System (ADS) software. Keysight will demonstrate the SIPro and PIPro solutions at DesignCon 2016, Santa Clara Convention Center, Booth 725, Jan. 20-21. Keysight is a host sponsor of the event.

SIPro uses an innovative new composite EM-technology that delivers high-frequency accuracy, together with the speed and capacity required for densely-routed cutting-edge PCB design. When compared to gold-standard Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations, SIPro demonstrates very good agreement at a small-fraction of the time and memory consumption, even above 20 GHz.

The PIPro solution is a collection of three PI-specific simulation engines for DC IR drop, AC power delivery network (PDN) impedance, and power plane resonances analysis. The DC IR drop simulator provides a table of DC voltages and currents for each via, pin, sink and voltage regulator module in the PDN, enabling SI/PI engineers to predict DC voltage at the pins of the ICs sinking the current. With the visualization of voltages, current density and power dissipation on the power and ground nets, engineers can easily identify trouble-spots in the design. The AC PDN impedance analysis calculates the frequency dependency of the PDN with decoupling capacitors in place. With power plane resonance simulation, the self-resonant frequencies of the layout are identified and the electric and magnetic fields visualized to better understand where resonances are originating.

SIPro and PIPro solutions feature a new analysis environment with a native 3D-viewer that enables designers to visually inspect nets prior to simulation and view post-processed field visualizations in 3D. The EM setup is completely net-driven, allowing designers to select only those nets they want to simulate, with no time or engineering effort required to manually edit or manipulate layout objects before simulation. With this new workflow, designers can go from layout to results in less than 20 clicks.

“Design engineers have to overcome amazing design challenges to deliver multi-gigabit data rates in the network infrastructure and devices we touch daily,” said Todd Cutler, vice president of Keysight EEsof EDA. “We expect these devices and systems to just work, but behind the scenes there’s an incredible amount of simulation and analysis required to produce reliable links. This release of ADS raises-the-bar on performance, accuracy and efficiency, for simulation and analysis of signal and power integrity design tasks; giving engineers the capabilities they need to address their toughest design challenges in the fastest way possible.”

ADS’s cohesive new workflow for SI and PI design tasks automatically generates schematics to prepare EM models for immediate use with ADS’s industry-leading channel, DDR bus and transient simulators. With these simulators, designers can conduct SI analyses (such as BER contour measurements) and complete their design verification with standard-specific compliance test benches. Also new in ADS 2016 is a PAM-4 simulation capability that allows system designers to use PAM-4 IBIS-AMI models within the ADS Channel Simulator. The introduction of this capability further advances Keysight EDA’s leadership position in IBIS-AMI SerDes channel simulation.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

Keysight EDA’s new SIPro and PIPro solutions will be available in ADS 2016 and is scheduled for release in February.

More information about the SIPro and PIPro solutions is available at www.keysight.com/find/eesof-ads-sipro and www.keysight.com/find/eesof-ads-pipro, respectively. Images of the solutions are available at www.keysight.com/find/ADS2016Solutions_images.

About DesignCon

DesignCon, produced by UBM Canon, is the world's premier conference for chip, board and systems design engineers in the high-speed communications and semiconductor communities. DesignCon, created by engineers for engineers, takes place annually in Silicon Valley and remains the largest gathering of chip, board and systems designers in the country. This four-day technical conference and expo combines technical paper sessions, tutorials, industry panels, product demos and exhibits from the industry's leading experts and solutions providers. More information is available at www.designcon.com/santaclara .