Zeland Upgrades IE3D EM Design System And FIDELITY Time-Domain Full 3-D EM Simulator

Zeland recently announced the release of IE3D EM Design System Version 14 and FIDELITY Time-Domain Full-3D EM Simulator Version 5.5. IE3D Version 14 is Zeland's method-of-moments-based electromagnetic (EM) software for high performance network distributed simulation and optimization. FIDELITY is a FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) based full 3-D EM simulator for modeling microwave circuits, components, and antenna, wireless/RF antennas, EMC and EMI structures, and other high-speed and high-frequency circuitry.

IE3D V14 is a huge leap forward from IE3D V12. It features:

1. Complete EM design environment with integrated layout editing, full-wave EM simulation, real-time EM tuning and optimization, s-parameters, current distribution, near field and radiation pattern visualization and post-processing.
2. Implementation of text objects for better documentations of designs.
3. Much improved layout editing with easy access and control of geometry objects, and options to speed up geometry editing of large structures.
4. Implementation of Boolean operations for connecting arbitrary 3D objects for high accuracy and easy geometry modeling.
5. Modeling of surface roughness.
6. Wide frequency s-parameter extraction covering from 1 Hz to 10 THz.
7. Coupled ports and differential ports de-embedding in highly packed circuits.
8. Improved multi-CPU support and significantly improved simulation speed on Windows 64.
9. Further improved layout editing on IE3DLibrary for Boolean driven, equation-based geometry modeling with easy parameterization, access and control of objects.
10. Automatic creation of IE3D/AGIF templates from TSMC unified technology files for automated layout creation and batch IE3D EM simulations from GDSII files.

FIDELITY V5.5 features:

1. Multi-core simulation capability: It allows users to fully exploit the power of multi-core computers for much improved simulation efficiency.
2. Network distributed and scheduled simulations: It allows users to submit jobs to JobsManager and JobsManager can send the jobs to ZDS/ZDM for network distributed simulations. The JobManager can also manage scheduled jobs for both local and network distributed simulations ZDS/ZDM licenses are required for network distributed simulations.
3. Hardware accelerated simulation by utilizing GPUs from Acceleware: GPU hardware acceleration may speed up the simulation by a factor of 10. Additional GPU licenses are required.
4. New PML boundary condition for better wave absorption: The new scheme can better absorb the waves especially for evanescent and higher-order mode waves for more accurate and faster results.
5. Improved de-embedding schemes for coaxial ports, microstrip ports, rectangular and circular waveguide ports: The improved scheme allows faster simulation and better accuracy.
6. FIDELITY - Case Study User's Manual: The FIDELITY Case Study User's Manual is officially released and the electronic copy is included in the installation.

SOURCE: Mentor Graphics, formerly Zeland Software, Inc.