Keysight Technologies Announces ADS 2016, Its Latest Advanced Design System Software Release

Software Delivers RF PCB, Laminate, Module, Silicon RFIC Technologies and other New Capabilities for Industry-Leading Circuit, Electromagnetic and Electro-Thermal Simulators

Highlights:
• Improves layout performance, adds functionality to improve productivity for IC, laminate and RF PCB design
• Introduces new circuit and EM simulation functionality
• Advances Keysight’s commitment to improving design productivity and efficiency through design flow integration with signal and power integrity capabilities, technologies and other improvements

Keysight Technologies, Inc.  today introduced the latest release of its powerful Advanced Design System (ADS) software, ADS 2016. The software improves design productivity and speeds circuit and electromagnetic simulation performance. ADS 2016 provides new RF printed circuit board, laminate, module, and silicon RFIC products, as well as technologies, capabilities and other enhancements.

“ADS users represent some of the best and brightest engineers in the industry, with their designs in almost every communication device in the world,” said Joe Civello, ADS product planning and marketing manager for Keysight EEsof EDA. “ADS 2016 represents a next major step forward and demonstrates our commitment to provide these engineers with softwarethat increases their design productivity and efficiency through design flow integration.”

ADS is the industry’s leading electronic design automation software for RF, microwave and signal-integrity applications. ADS 2016 provides users with continued advances for the following.

Circuit Simulation
ADS 2016 enhanced the harmonic balance and circuit envelope simulators to improve speed, convergence and accuracy. Enhanced DC annotation speeds development of even the most complex designs. Windows and Linux support for the Electro-Thermal simulator now make it accessible to more designers.

Layout and Layout Verification
Numerous enhancements and new capabilities make ADS layout faster, more intuitive and manufacturing robust. Enhancements include manufacturing grid checking and control, improvements to ground nets, a faster 3D viewer, improved highlighting and connectivity,and mapping of layout nets to schematic net names, as well as importing .brd files for Momentum electromagnetic (EM) simulation.

Silicon RFIC
ADS 2016 adds functionality to benefit the OpenAccess-based interoperable and native ADS silicon RFIC design flows. Designers can now use ADS/Virtuoso interoperable PDKs and iPDKs from foundries supporting the IPL Alliance standard from within the ADS platform, making industry leading simulation and analysis capabilities readily available to more silicon foundry customers and designers. Enhancements to the ADS Interoperable flow include the buildout of EM-cosimulation between circuit Spice models and interconnect EM, enhanced analogLib and VerilogA support, improved DC annotation, schematic Pcells, and added wire editing features. Layout and Momentum have also been enhanced for Silicon applications including support for TSMC iRCX, Momentum via simplification and metal fill simulation, as well as parameterized EM substrates. And, a new metal fill generation utility for silicon has been added to ADS Advanced Layout.

Signal and Power Integrity
ADS 2016 delivers SIPro, a signal integrity focused EM simulator that delivers high-accuracy for high-complexity PCB applications and PIPro, a power integrity focused suite of EM simulators for analysis of power delivery networks.

In addition to these advances, ADS 2016 also introduces a number of new products and improved capabilities.
• Direct layout import from Cadence Allegro .BRD file
• Pulsed amplitude modulation (PAM-4) signaling support in the IBIS-AMI Channel Simulator
• DDR bus simulator support for receiver equalization for DDR4
• Channel simulator support for the mix and match IBIS-AMI models with IBIS, SPICE and built-in transmitter/receiver models.
• New S-parameter checker/viewer

More information on ADS 2016 is available at www.keysight.com/find/eesof-ads2016.01. An image of the new software release is available at www.keysight.com/find/ADS2016_images.

U.S. Pricing and Availability                                                   Keysight’s ADS 2016 is now shipping. Contact Keysight at www.keysight.com/find/contactus for specific pricing information.