New Features

We’re pleased to announce the Sonnet^® Suites Release 11. Many new features and enhancements have been added to this release, making Sonnet faster, easier to use and more tightly integrated with your high frequency design flow.  Listed below is a summary of the major new features in Sonnet Suites Release 11.  You may also wish to download and review "9 Good Reasons to Upgrade to Release 11" by clicking on this link.

Co-calibrated™ Ports and Calibration Port Groups

Co-calibrated internal ports introduce perfectly calibrated connections on the interior of a circuit layout so that models may be connected in your favorite frequency or time domain circuit simulator. These connections are fully de-embedded, removing the electrical discontinuity that is introduced by the port itself. Co-calibrated Ports are combined in Calibration Groups, and simultaneously de-embedded in order to remove all cross-coupling between the ports in the group. Through group co-calibration, ports may be very closely spaced without cross-coupling; often much closer together than the substrate thickness. The example below shows how Co-calibrated ports in a calibration group “A” can be used to remove a MIM capacitor from a circuit, leaving the connection ports. A detailed MIM capacitor model may be recombined in a Sonnet Netlist Project, or in a circuit theory simulator by attaching the model at the schematic level. For a more detailed description of Co-calibrated Ports and calibration groups, see Co-calibrated Ports and Components.

Components

A Component is used to include an electrical or circuit theory model into your electromagnetic simulation. The electrical model may be an ideal component (like an ideal capacitor), or a data file (such as a vendor S-parameter model for a surface-mount transistor or amplifier). The EM analysis engine, em® uses circuit theory to attach the specified component to your geometry for the EM simulation. Alternatively, you can simply leave the component with open ports, and add the device model later in the circuit theory analysis tool of your choice. A key feature of the component is the ability to calibrate the connection with respect to the terminal width of the connecting device. In this way, the discontinuity between a surface mount pad and the terminal width of the component is accurately characterized in Sonnet and included in the EM analysis. Circuit current density can be shown to include the effects of the component models. For a more detailed description of Components, see Co-calibrated Ports and Components.

64-Bit EM Analysis Engine

The Sonnet EM Analysis Engine, em®, has been enhanced for 64-bit Windows and Linux platforms to allow virtually unlimited problem size—limited only by the physical amount of RAM on your computer. The EM Analysis Engine will run on either 32-bit or 64-bit operating systems, but in order to analyze the larger circuits afforded by 64-bit processing, a 64-bit operating system such as Windows x64 XP is required. Customers receiving Release 11 Analysis Engine licenses will have the 64-bit analysis capability for Windows and Linux at no additional cost. No additional licenses or costs are required.

Improved Analysis Engine Provides Faster Analysis

The new EM Analysis Engine for Release 11 includes significant performance improvements, yielding up to 40% faster analysis over Release 10 on the newer Intel and AMD processor platforms (Linux and Windows).

Re-designed Agilent ADS Interface (ebridge)

The Agilent ADS interface (feature name: ebridge) has been completely redesigned and re-written to provide significantly tighter integration. Existing circuit layouts in ADS can be used to instantly create accompanying Sonnet projects for EM model extraction. Existing Agilent Momentum projects may also be used to create instant Sonnet projects, and may be viewed in Sonnet’s 3D Circuit Viewer. Sonnet extraction models created during EM simulation are automatically imported into ADS, along with a schematic “layout look-alike” symbol, accompanying model layout and model data set. Sonnet models may also incorporate the new Co-Calibrated Ports or Components features to further enhance the ability of ADS to accurately model surface mount device connections. For all the details on the new interface, see Chapter 1, “Agilent Interface” in the Sonnet Translators manual.

Simplified Distributed Computing with Sonnet Cluster

Sonnet’s cluster computing capability enables you to use many computers to solve large EM analysis problems in record time by dividing the analysis frequencies between CPUs. In Release 10.53, the cluster computing capability was introduced under the Platform Technology Load Sharing Facility (LSF) cluster control software. In Release 11, this feature may be implemented on an existing network of computers without need for 3rd party software. emCluster® with Sonnet Networking (Sonnet Cluster) uses our existing Remote EM Processing capability, enabling a cluster control and job scheduling system entirely within the Sonnet environment. EM Processing nodes on the cluster do not need access to common disk drives as all node-to-node communication is performed efficiently and flawlessly through virtual socket connections on your network. Sonnet Cluster is easy to set up, can use your existing desktop or computing servers, works on mixed 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and Linux platform environments, and may be shared by network users. It can also be combined with standard floating licenses of the EM Analysis Engine so that you can run analysis jobs locally or on your computing cluster. In Release 11, the interfaces to Agilent ADS, AWR Microwave Office, and Cadence Virtuoso may be directed to automatically send Sonnet EM Analysis jobs to an emCluster® or run the jobs locally.

Markers in the Response Viewer
Markers in the Sonnet Response Viewer (emgraph) allow you to annotate a plot in the response viewer to help you more easily interpret data and more clearly present your data to others. Markers now include Data, Curve, Vertical Value, Horizontal Value, Delta and Note.

New Cadence® Virtuoso® Interface Utilities Available
Two new utilities are added to the Cadence Virtuoso Interface. A Symbol Model Utility creates a symbol view in Cadence from a Sonnet Broadband Spice model file in the Cadence Spectre (.scs) format. The second utility, Substrate Conversion, converts Agilent Substrate files (.tch) into a Sonnet Substrate File (.matl) that can be used by our Cadence Virtuoso interface.

New DXF Export Features

Several enhancements are provided to ease the transition of designs from the Sonnet Project Editor back to a manufacturing design flow through the DXF file format. Trace and via information can be exported from Sonnet to separate DXF layers. Rectangular Sonnet vias can be converted to circular vias in DXF. When multiple materials (metal, resist, etc.) exist on the same layer, they can be exported by material type to separate DXF layers.

HSpice Compatibility for Broadband Spice Extraction Models
Sonnet’s Broadband Spice Model Extractor (bbextract) now provides models that are compatible with HSpice simulators.

Larger Circuits can be Analyzed in the Same RAM Space
Now all Suite levels (not just Professional) use available RAM memory more efficiently by utilizing a symmetric matrix solver. This change enables users to solve jobs that have on the order of 40% more subsections (unknowns) than in the previous release.

Cadence and Virtuoso are registered trademarks of Cadence.

Sonnet Release 11 was made available to customers in March 2007.

 
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