Agilent Technologies Inc. announced Advanced Design System release 2008. Advanced Design System (ADS) is an industry-leading high-frequency, high-speed electronic design automation (EDA) software platform. This release contains productivity breakthroughs for faster communications product design.


“Working closely with our top customers, we’ve enhanced this ADS release with user interface and technology improvements that speed the design process,” said Jim McGillivary, general manager of Agilent’s EEsof EDA division. “In 2008, I am challenging my development team to double customer productivity for a comprehensive set of typical design tasks, which we’ll publish and track on our web site.”

Advanced Design System 2008’s advanced, graphical user interface enhancements come from the same interface development platform used by the most popular Internet software tools and search engines, and contain advanced search and context-dependent features. The speed improvements gained from this new interface help make software-tools integration seamless for common and emerging design applications.

Speed and productivity enhancements include:

• improved project management, real-time zoom and pan, interactive 3-D layout viewing, stretching and cut planes;

• improved LVS (layout vs. schematic) design synchronization, providing full control over the automation to guarantee the correct layout;

• updated design rule checking and fast, accurate artwork export/import for a smoother transition from design to production;

• full 3-D electromagnetic integration into ADS, for designers who increasingly need electromagnetic analysis for complete communications product design. The integrated Electromagnetic Design System also contains a faster bond wire drawing interface;

• the latest multi-processor computing, including support for today’s 64-bit processors; and

• faster high frequency transient simulations, providing average speed improvements of up to 6x for large circuits.

Because high speed digital designers are now facing the same physical design challenges that Agilent’s EDA design tools have addressed for RF and microwave design, Advanced Design System 2008 features full support for high speed, gigabit link (signal integrity) design, including advanced bit error rate measurement and analysis.

This is first in a series of four ADS releases expected in 2008. By the end of the year, Agilent plans to double productivity for common design and simulation tasks compared with previous versions of ADS.