( DAC 00 Item 49 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 7/13/00 ]
Subject: Analog RF Tools -- Cadence 'Spectra RF' & Mentor 'ELDO RF'
ANALOG RF: The two big players in the Analog RF world that was noticed at
this year's DAC was Cadence and Mentor:
"Analog RF - with wireless and high speed clocks becoming important, RF
is getting a lot of attention. The two main players are Mentor with
their ELDO RF product and Cadence with Spectra RF. The Mentor tool
actually does real stuff -- large & small signal frequency domain
analysis, transient analysis, distortion, wave S domain analysis, etc.
Most of this combo of runs is needed for the new dual tone cell phones
and pagers. The tool runs from both DA and Analog Artist so it is a
point tool drop in that is a nice solution to these flows.
The Cadence RF is close to useless. It is a primarily a transient
analysis tool with very very limited application do to being limited to
primarily time domain. Most of the info in the data suites indicated
that their main focus is time domain analysis event tho most designers
at these frequencies want non-time domain info (spectral density,
s-parameter, noise, bandwidth). They also did not have an integrated
flow for importation of post-layout extracted design data into the
simulator. At this time neither of the products was multi-threaded or
distributed so the user is in for long simulations unless the S
parameters are used. Another problem was the focus on the product being
built around the new Cadence framework - so existing SKILL scripts won't
run - you need to recode your automation in TCL."
- an anon engineer
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