SIwave™ employs specialized full-wave finite-element engines to compute resonances, reflections, inter-trace coupling, simultaneous switching noise, power/ground bounce and DC voltage/current distributions on high-speed PCBs and complex IC packages. SIwave can extract complete designs (which include multiple, arbitrarily shaped power/ground layers, vias, signal traces and circuit elements) with unprecedented accuracy and speed, without requiring potentially laborious layout partitioning by the user. SIwave extracts S, Y and Z-parameters, displays 3D electromagnetic fields and generates Full-Wave SPICE™ models for subsequent time- and frequency-domain analyses within Nexxim® and DesignerSI® or third-party SPICE-compatible circuit tools.

In particular, SIwave characterizes power and signal-integrity effects such as:

• Impedance presented by the power and ground structures
• Effects of decoupling capacitor placement on plane impedance
• Power and ground bounce
• Impedance discontinuities caused by signals changing layers
• Impedance discontinuities due to non-uniformities in planes
• Noise coupling (SSO/SSN) between signal lines and supply planes
• Time-domain effects, such as propagation delay, rise and fall times, reflections and ringing
• Frequency-domain phenomena, such as resonant modes and S-parameters

Design Flow
SIwave seamlessly integrates into existing design flows by importing design geometry directly from EDA layout tools (such as Cadence Allegro®/APD, Sigrity Encore™, Mentor Graphics Board Station®, Expedition™ and PADS®, and Zuken CR5000). The resulting S-,Y- or Z-parameters or Full-Wave SPICE models can be imported into existing circuit tools, such as Nexxim® and DesignerSI™ or other SPICE-compatible tools.