CST E-News March 2007

Welcome to the March issue of CST's E-News, our series of regular news and feature updates. We hope that you find the contents relevant, interesting and informative. Any feedback and suggestions for future editions is welcome.

News in brief

1. CST rises to the EDA challenge
2. CST DESIGN STUDIO™ goes transient
3. CST EM STUDIO®: E-Quasistatic solver
4. European User Group Meeting
5. Training sessions
6. Corporate news
7. www.cst.com - new application articles

1. CST rises to the EDA challenge

CST MICROWAVE STUDIO® was the only commercial software to solve a complex IC package benchmark set by IBM. This benchmark was set in the scope of the 15th Conference on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging (EPEP 2006, www.epep.org) during a special session hosted by IBM on the "Parallelization of EM Full-Wave Solvers for Product-Level Problems".

The benchmark was a complete IC package, provided as a Cadence® Allegro® layout with 8 metallization layers and a total of 40,000 geometrical entities. The problem involved a group of 20 fan-out lines and the associated differential pair clock lines. S-parameters were sought over the range 200 KHz to 20 GHz for at least four lines.

CST MICROWAVE STUDIO® solved this Signal Integrity problem not only for four, but for all twenty lines. Typical deviations between measurement and simulation were around 1%, e.g. simulated signal delay time of 120ps as compared to a measured one of 118.7ps. CST's proprietory Cadence interface provided robust data exchange including automatic model clean-up.

A study concentrating on the 20 fan out-lines section was carried out using the transient (27 million mesh nodes) as well as the frequency domain solver (with 5.3 million tetrahedrons after the mesh adaptation). In addition to this study, the entire package was solved using a heavily parallelized prototype software based on CST's FIT technology. Here the total number of meshpoints amounted to about 650 million which corresponds to 3.9 billion degrees of freedom.

More information about Full Package Signal Integrity Analysis.

2. CST DESIGN STUDIO™ goes transient

Are you familiar with CST DESIGN STUDIO™'s (CST DS) transient solver? You may have seen it in the complimentary schematic tool that comes with every CST MWS license, or in its full version in CST DS itself. The transient task enables the simulation of arbitrarily shaped time signals propagating through structures described in your schematic. These structures may represent CST MWS 3D EM simulations or any other S-parameter or circuit block.

This is of particular interest to those working in signal integrity as it facilitates the creation of eye diagrams, even of complex structures, and the inclusion of clipping or clamping diodes.

3. CST EM STUDIO®: E-Quasistatic solver

With the release of CST STUDIO SUITE™ 2006B, CST EM STUDIO® (CST EMS) features an electro-quasistatic solver (EQS). Typical EQS applications can be found in the area of high-voltage, semiconductor, and biomedical engineering. In the Electro-Quasistatic Solver the inductive term in Faraday's equation (and thus eddy currents) is discarded. The electro-quasistatic approximation can be applied to slowly varying fields when wave propagation is neglectable and the electric energy is dominant. This is usually true in the presence of low conductivity materials.

This example shows the behavior of the electric field on a surface with conductive contamination. The model consists of a dielectric cylindrical insulator (epoxy resin) which is capped by two electrodes and contaminated by seven water drops. The frequency of the alternating voltage is 50 Hz and a voltage gradient of 500 V/mm is applied.

4. European User Group Meeting

CST's 3rd European User Group Meeting will be held 13-14 September 2007 on Lake Tegernsee, Germany. This meeting offers the perfect environment for designers and researchers to exchange ideas, share experiences, and talk with CST staff about future developments. 150 - 200 participants are expected to attend this year's event which will feature user-contributed talks, CST application and feature tutorials, power trainings, and the keynote speech on state of the art simulation technology.

The provisional agenda, call for contributions, and on-line registration can be found online.

5. Training sessions

An increased number of dedicated product training sessions are being offered world-wide: Course details of these regular seminars can be found training, and an overview of all events including workshops and exhibitions are listed on our events page.

6. Corporate news

The last 3 years have seen an average annual growth rate of 24% in product sales, and has further confirmed CST's position as market leader in 3D EM Time Domain simulation. This consistent growth has been achieved through increased market share and the successful expansion into new markets. CST's top product of 2006 was again CST MICROWAVE STUDIO® which was introduced in 1998 as the first member of CST STUDIO SUITE™.

Alongside increasing sales figures, staff numbers and office space have also been growing. Over 100 employees are dedicated to developing and supporting CST's cutting edge software and CST of America's West coast office has moved to more spacious premises.

"2006 was another excellent year for CST. Our technology and increasing engineering force enable us to gain market share every year" said Bernhard Wagner, Managing Director, Sales and Marketing. "With our solvers in both time and frequency domains we offer the most complete solution for the EM high frequency market and this will guarantee our further expansion over the following years."

7. www.cst.com - new application articles

New application articles are regularly being added to our website. Recent additions include Cadence® Allegro® Import in CST STUDIO SUITE™ illustrating one of the numerous interface options for improved workflow integration.

Your CST Team

CST - Changing the Standards
Computer Simulation Technology
info@cst.com, www.cst.com