PeakView® HFD™ is an electromagnetic and parasitic inductance extraction tool for evaluating the EM behavior of critical signal interconnects in high-speed designs. At microwave and millimeter-wave frequencies, full-wave EM modeling of arbitrary routings become indispensable to accurately characterize the impact of parasitic inductive (L) effects of these structures. Today’s common LPE flow only focuses on R and C extraction while missing the L parasitic components. HFD™ fills the gap for such insufficiencies in LPE solutions, using PeakView®’s 3D EM engine to simulate and model the selected interconnect geometries. EM models are automatically back-annotated to the original post-layout parasitic extracted views or DSPF files for netlisting and simulation.
- Seamless PDK integration: Calibre LVS and all RC tools (xRC/xAct, StarRC,QRC)
- Full-wave layout parasitic extraction
- Connectivity reliability and automated back-annotation
HFD™ Flow

HFD™ Compliments the Traditional LPE Flow for a Comprehensive EM Model
- Accuracy & Performance: HFD™ utilizes the PeakView® full-wave EM simulation technology to analyze critical interconnect, and provides a complete EM model with parasitic inductive, resistive, capacitive effects and substrate losses.
- Automation and Flow Integration: Designers select nets from the schematic or layout editor then HFD prepares them for net extraction, pin insertion for simulation, model generation and back-annotation while preserving the connectivity from LVS.
- Full-Wave EM Engine: Revolutionary EM solver technology with the capacity of efficiently handling a large assortment of interconnects with hundreds of ports to generate accurate electromagnetic models. Quick EM technology also drastically boosts simulation performance without the loss of accuracy.
- Customized Accuracy Tuning: This is particularly useful for scenarios where concurrent simulation for structures of varying scales is required. PeakView®’s flexible meshing techniques easily optimize EM simulations for special-purposed cases.
- Wide Applications: PeakView® HFD™ excels in accounting for skin effect losses, which are not considered by traditional RC extraction tools. Therefore, it has been widely adopted in analyzing critical interconnect components in voltage controlled oscillators (VCO), low-noise amplifiers (LNA), power amplifiers (PA), digital clock lines and other high-frequency integrated systems.
HFD™ Back-Annotation Options Options
- HFD-L: Original RC elements and connections are preserved. HFD™ only adds the inductive elements.
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- Applications: most commonly used in RF/high-speed parasitic extraction flow (StarRC, QRC, xAct) where designers are happy with RC extraction but worried about missing inductance.
- Advantages: Both inductance extraction and backannotation are extremely efficient, and the final model friendly to transient simulations.
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- HFD-NPORT/HFD-RLC: External coupling and ground capacitances are “shuffled” to ports, and the original parasitic RC elements are replaced by PeakView®’s nport or RLCK model.
- Applications: This method is used when the high frequency effect or fullwave modeling is critical.
- Advantages: It provides highest EM modeling accuracy based on fullwave EM solver.

- HFD-NPORT/HFD-RLC: External coupling and ground capacitances are “shuffled” to ports, and the original parasitic RC elements are replaced by PeakView®’s nport or RLCK model.
- Applications: This method is used when the high frequency effect or fullwave modeling is critical.
- Advantages: It provides highest EM modeling accuracy based on fullwave EM solver.

Silicon Correlation
- HFD™ simulations capturing parasitic influences from DC to 60 GHz and beyond continusly demonstrate excellent correlation to silicon data in advanced process nodes deployed in major wireless companies and foundries.
- The HFD™ flow has been applied to RF Reference Design Kits from TSMC, where the results have been validated to match silicon from 40 GHz to 60 GHz. Lorentz Solution, Inc. has also collaborated with Stanford University on research projects where HFD results correlated very well with silicon measurements in the range of 50-70 GHz.

HFD™ Supported Formats
- HFD Setup
- iRCX format technology file from TSMC
- ITF format technology file from foundries
- HFD Input
- Calibre LVS® clean design through SVDB database
- PEX: Calibre xRC® / Synopsis StarRC™ / Cadence® QRC results in DSPF file format
- PEX: Calibre xRC® / Synopsis StarRC™ / Cadence® QRC results in extracted view
- HFD Output
- DSPF file format, backannotated by PeakView® and ready for circuit simulation
- Cadence® format (OA/CDBA) extracted view, backannotated by PeakView® and ready for circuit simulation
- Platform
- Linux 64 bit, i.e. Redhat and SUSE
- LSF, NC-based computing farm