( DAC 04 Item 33 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 02/09/05 ]
Subject: Sandwork SPICE Explorer & WaveView Analyzer
HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU, KID -- Sandwork appears to be the king of linters
and waveform viewers in the SPICE simulation market. Their big draw is
that the user gets one debug environment even though he/she may be using
a mix of HSIM, PowerMill, TimeMill, NanoSim, HSPICE, Eldo, ADMS, Spectre,
Spectre-RF, UltraSim, NC-Verilog, PSPICE, SmartSpice, and ADS simulators.
Sandwork sells a SPICE linter and also a tool that allows you to preview
your SPICE stimulus (boy could that have save me some time in the past).
They also have an analysis tool for SPICE waveforms. They do not make
an actual SPICE simulator.
- John Weiland of Intrinsix Corp.
The circuit designers here like Sandwork's SPICE Explorer waveform
viewer. In its latest version, it has a tcl interface which allows
the user to do a lot of the same waveform manipulation in script form.
We started to use this for post processing HSPICE/Spectre simulation
outputs.
- Joseph Dao of Aeluros
We use Sandwork's WaveView Analyzer. We purchased it mainly for its
wide compatibility with many simulation engines, such as Cadence,
NanoSim, Verilog, and HSPICE. It took us a month or two overall to
set up our environment with WaveView.
Its key functionality is a user friendly environment (compared to
Cadence), fast user response time, and good mixed-signal capability.
I'd say it runs roughly 2-3 times faster than Cadence's environment.
Like all other 3rd party tools, it needs to be set up and integrated
within Cadence's environment before it becomes very useful.
I would recommend Sandwork to other engineers, particularly for
verification engineers that view SPICE waveforms all day long.
- Louis Wong of St Jude Medical
Our group works on CDR (clock and data recovery) and PLL (phase-locked
loop) that are used in PCIe PHY. The top-level transient closed loop
simulations of these blocks usually generate huge data sizes in the
range of gigabytes.
Sandwork SPICE Explorer retrieves our data very quickly, in less than
a few minutes, and with features like zoom in/out, group/ungroup, etc.
This is what prompted us to make the decision to purchase it.
The SPICE Explorer functionalities we use the most are displaying eye
diagram and jitter measurement. We found them very easy to use.
We also found their waveform grouping is very flexible; we can just
drag and drop at ease. We found that adding multiple wave views
(either from different simulation runs on the same circuit netlist or
from different netlists) in the same SPICE Explore session allows the
screen to look less clustered.
We can update the results on one particular wave view, and the
previously loaded wave views on the same simulation will not get
updated. This is useful because it allows us to evaluate and compare
simulation results based on different setup and operating conditions,
etc...
SPICE Explorer's frequency, duty cycle, and period measurement features
are also easy to use. We just move the meter on the waveform and get a
numerical reading of the measurement interactively without using any
cursors like other tools.
Weaknesses:
1. Sometimes updating the waveform does not seem to do the "update."
To resolve this problem, we interrupt the simulation and use the
"flush" command, then update again.
2. WaveView does not display the signal waveform if it is a static
signal, e.g., a "lock" signal in the PLL can stay low for a long
time until the loop locks and "lock" signal changes to high logic.
Unless there is a transition of lock signal going high, WaveView
usually does not display the waveform.
3. We didn't find a lot of features/functionalities built for ADC/DAC
and RF types of circuits (although we don't have the need right
now for these features).
Cadence AWD vs. Sandwork WaveView:
For loading transient simulation results, WaveView Analyzer is much
faster in loading results than Cadence AWD, especially with data size
in the order of 100's of megabytes to a few gigabytes. WaveView can
refresh the display screen much faster than AWD, e.g., zoom in/out,
drag and drop signals, group/ungroup waveforms, etc. Each of these
actions will initiate a refresh of the display and AWD sometimes takes
a long time to complete, which can be a very frustrated experience.
WaveView loads results from wdf (HSIM), psf (AWD), tr# (HSPICE), etc.
This versatility is very useful as different users may have their own
preferences.
We found that SPICE Explorer's waveform loading speed and its loading
capacity are much superior to AWD. Not only that, completing the
loading for AWD sometimes takes 15-20 minutes, while SPICE Explorer
takes less than a minute to do. Then if we decide to remove and/or add
more waveforms later, then it takes the same amount of time to refresh
(update) it each time, so this time adds up substantially.
Set-up and installation of SPICE Explorer was not much effort, and we
got prompt support at the beginning when we needed it.
I highly recommend Sandwork.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We initially purchased Sandwork's SPICE Explorer/WaveView Analyzer to
view results from Nassda HSIM. Prior experience was with PSPICE Probe.
We were very pleased with SPICE Explorer's ease of use and the speed
of loading waveforms. We haven't done benchmarking, but our experience
is that 2GB data files load in seconds as opposed to minutes in other
viewers.
We use its built-in FFT and ADC characterization functions. They're
very handy. Also, the ability to export text files with specific
sampling rates is quite helpful.
Their search feature makes it very quick to plot signals in large
netlists. All you have to do is type in the name of the signal you
are looking for surrounded by *'s and the appropriate node pops up.
Set-up is very quick, just a few minutes. Fits seamlessly into our
PC-based and Linux-based design flows.
My only gripe is its calculator is not that easy to use (similar to
that in Cadence.)
I would recommend it. Overall, a good value.
- Roger Levinson of Intersil
Sandwork's SPICE Explorer tool is a versatile and robust waveform
viewing and analysis tool. At work we deal use multiple simulators
and deal with very large simulation output files. SPICE Explorer
helps us to use one viewer to access all simulation files. It also
can operate on large files much faster than any of the other viewers
that we have used.
What I liked:
1. applying .meas post simulation
2. grouping waveform files that are outputs of a sweep
3. ability to operate on pretty much any output file format
4. ability to view post-layout spice netlist parasitics
5. extremely fast viewing of very large output files
6. command-line access (ACE programming).
When compared to Avanti Awaves and Synopsys Cscope, Sandwork WaveView
performs much better in terms of speed, support for multiple formats,
ease of use and feature set.
A 3 GB tr0 file wouldn't even load on Awaves. It can be opened in
about 30 sec in Sandwork WaveView.
WDF: A 1.35 GB nw0 file is 616 MB in the Sandwork wdf format. This is
more than 50% reduction in file size.
The setup was quick and easily integrated into the existing CAD
infrastructure. Sandwork support is above par. Their first response
is always within 24 hrs for an email question.
I would greatly recommend Sandwork to any engineer who routinely deals
with large SPICE simulation files, post-layout simulations or uses
multiple simulators.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Sandwork makes what I believe to be the "best in class" analog
waveform display tool. We use their SPICE Explorer environment, which
includes the WaveView Analyzer waveform display tool. I'm routinely
impressed by the achievements of the development team at Sandwork.
SPICE Explorer is powerful, effective, and constantly being enhanced.
It works with a host of different simulators and output formats, and is
clearly the benchmark for how an analog waveform display tool should
look. If anyone hasn't seen it yet, it's worth taking a look at.
We've been using SPICE Explorer for about a year and a half now, in a
Cadence Composer environment with Synopsys Circuit Explorer analog
optimization tools and HSPICE and NanoSim as the underlying circuit
simulation tools. It's a very effective combination.
- Mike Carter of Potentia Semiconductor
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