What About Bunny?

 Sherry Hess, Vice President of Marketing, AWR. Read profile >>

Yeah, what about Bunny? Early in February, I attended DesignCon 2010, and, aside from having a number of really great meetings with customers, partners, and media, I was curious if there would be a return of Bunny. As all of you who attended DesignCon 2009 will remember, Bunny was the talk of the show (for better or worse is a personal judgement call).

No Bunny at DesignCon this year, but following Altium’s lead at taking a risk by trying something new, AWR exhibited for the first time this year as a partner within the Anritsu booth. DesignCon 2010 proved to be a successful venture. We exhibited our AWR Connected™ solutions with Anritsu, and our unique joint solution for signal integrity that combines Anritsu¹s VectorStar test equipment with AWR's Microwave Offic® high-frequency design software. The value of this combination is that Microwave Office adds functionality above and beyond what can be done with the hardware itself – in particular adding to S-parameter measurements the ability to visualize eye diagrams and time domain simulation results- and this is especially useful in signal integrity applications. AWR Connected™ for Anritsu makes the MS4640A the first microwave instrument in the world to physically integrate a full suite of design software within its firmware. You can see AWR’s DesignCon 2010 video interview as well as a demo of this solution on AWR.TV.

Also at this show, for those of you with keen vision, you would have noticed a yet-to- be-released link to Cadence Allegro.This new capability enables Allegro/APD users to export their layout (or portion thereof) into Microwave Office. And last but not least, AWR’s industry expert on EM, Dr. John Dunn, presented a three-hour tutorial entitled The Use of Computer Clusters and Spectral and Domain Decomposition in 3D FEM Analysis. The year prior, John presented a tutorial called Understanding Grounding Concepts in EM Simulators that was a big hit with the audience and has since been turned into an extremely popular white paper and a 6-part EM tutorial on AWR TV. Stay tuned for more on the 3D FEM analysis tutorial!

“What about Bunny” was the take-away line from DesignCon 2009 for me. This year it was certainly all… “What about AWR!”

iNets – I've heard the name but what is it?

 Dr. Mike Heimlich, Microwave & RF Marketing, AWR

One of the true gems of EDA technology that is certainly deserving of the Rodney Dangerfield Award (“I don’t get no respect!”) is iNets™. Not that anyone doing MMIC, module or PCB design should feel guilty that they’ve been negligent by not hunting down this capability...it was originally developed for silicon RFIC.

For the well-versed AWR user, iNets are multi-pin MTRACE or MCTRACE fused with bridge code but without the symbol on the schematic. For the greater electronic design community, it’s the ability to have a wire on the schematic that is routable over many layers, with an auto via insertion capability that knows how to terminate the route on whatever pins to which it is connected. What separates iNets from dumb polygon routes is that they also enable you to decide later how they should be modeled (if at all). 

iNets first appeared in the 2006 version of AWR’s Analog Office® RFIC design software.  For the “high-frequency” silicon designer attempting feats of microwave or mm-wave fame, a major challenge is what to do with the interconnect. Given that the typical silicon RFIC has more interconnect than there are Mickey Mouse ears at Disney World, and that the substrate is lossy plus “where’s the ground?”, there’s a lot to take into consideration. So the initial incarnation of iNets let users route a wire in their schematic, which enabled them to incrementally model it as they refined their design along the way to tape out. For example, starting with all the lines being a short, users could have the iNet automatically tie together a series of RF/microwave interconnect models for them that were process dependent so as to give a first-cut measure of loss and delay at GHz frequencies. Later on, they could send it to a parasitic extraction engine or eventually do a full-up EM.

Pretty cool. This concept was then taken over to Microwave Office® for MMIC and module design. The result: iNets that we have today in the current version of AWR software.

So if you’re a MMIC designer, iNets can keep your DC lines on your schematic for inclusion later when you’re scratching your head as to why you have an oscillation in your world’s greatest PA or high gain amp. In the early stages of the design, you can just leave ‘em alone. But when you want to make the boss proud that your DC lines are not just a bad tank circuit, two mouse-clicks later you’re EXTRACTing your iNet’d DC lines to ACE™, AXIEM™, or your favorite EM solver in the EM Socket™.

For module design, getting some spirals onto the softboard is a great cost savings, and while you don’t necessarily want to nail down their size early in the flow, you may want to look at their cross-coupling.  Lay them out with an iNet and you can easily push, pull, and stretch to get a feel for the space you need.  Incrementally EM’ing them with a few of the extra lines in the vicinity is a great balance between speed and accuracy in the middle part of your design when you are trying to get the layout to fit without blowing out your space constraints.

And for the PCB designer. Welcome to nirvana. Manually route your lines, inserting the vias you want or letting the iNet router do it for you.  When you’re ready to do that final verification...WHAM! send it to ACE or an EM solver to nail the electricals before using an AWRConnected™ link to migrate it into your enterprise PCB tool and manufacturing.

Check out iNets...it's one of the best darn feature you’ll ever use when it comes to circuit designers’ layouts and probably the one you’ve heard the least about. Don’t just take my word for it, see it in action on AWR.TV and then call your local sales contact or AE to put iNets to work for you!