Accuracy, Speed and Capacity

Overview

PeakView™ 3D full-wave electromagnetic solver combines the most rigorous mathematical accuracy, minimal simulation time and enhanced computational capacity in modeling IC devices and interconnect, with no compromise on silicon correlated accuracy from DC – mmWave – TeraHz frequency range. Our state-of-the-art simulation engine typically runs 10x faster than traditional structure simulators maintaining excellent numeric precision. It is designed to efficiently analyze the complex structures found in modern semiconductor technology.

The Leading EM Sign-Off Tool in the Market

PeakView™ engine is meticulous in meshing asymmetric and non-rectilinear geometry. Smart meshing strategies are used to optimize computation time and preserve high accuracy taking into account process and design requirements. For example, tall side-walls of advanced process nodes are analyzed with precise sidewall meshing. Skin effects at high frequencies are accounted for with special meshing algorithms that consider current density. Thick metal layers, e.g. AP, are uniquely treated for high quality EM results.

PeakView™’s Method-of-Moments-based field solver is tested for numerical accuracy using rigorous meshing densities at frequencies above millimeter-wavelengths (beyond 80 GHz), and as low as in the MHz range. Our numerical methods are accurate to 4 decimal places and we have been able to achieve 80dB SNR in isolation studies.  Physical effects associated with dielectric layers, Epi and SOI substrates are correctly modeled in PeakView™. It allows for easy handling of process corners and temperature coefficients. Our EM solver accuracy has been consistently demonstrated in tape outs, test chips and silicon correlation studies.

Moreover, Peaview provides the multisheet current (MSC) as an effective volume meshing method to capture current vertical distribution and vertical current effects, and 3D full-wave solutions.

Current distributions at DC and at high frequency, respectively.

DC-mmWave-TeraHz accuracy with 3D-Full Wave Solver

PeakView™ maintains perfect low-frequency accuracy for both electromagnetic (EM) and circuit properties, making it an ideal tool for ultra-broadband designs. Achieving reliable EM accuracy at very low frequencies is a classic challenging EM task due to the ill conditions caused by the charge and current decoupling. PeakView™ addresses these issues by using an advanced null-space technique to separate the electric and magnetic fields, improving the matrix condition and achieving DC-mmWave-TeraHz accuracy.
PeakView™ is capable of providing reliable results at frequencies as low as 0.001Hz. This is a remarkable capability that sets it apart from other EM solvers in the market. The strengthened formula and circuit properties computations at low frequencies also make it an ideal tool for designing and analyzing ultra-broadband circuits.

Speed advantage with proprietary HCS technology

PeakView™ is a powerful electromagnetic (EM) solver that utilizes multi-core processors to perform fast, multi-threaded simulations. The solver is capable of running simultaneous simulations on different cells, and the speed increase with the number of cores is almost linear thanks to the use of the multi-threading option.
With the release of version 5.3.4, PeakView™ has introduced several enhancements to its speed and capacity. One of the major improvements is the introduction of the High Capacity Solver (HCS), an iterative EM solver engine that achieves production quality with major applications in brute-force metal fill and other large-scale EM simulations.
The HCS engine has been rigorously benchmarked against PeakView’s default patented 3D DC-mmWave-TeraHz engine on accuracy and now dramatically extends the solver capacity and performance for cases that are beyond the reach of PeakView’s already world’s best direct solver engine.
HCS allows solving EM problems 5-10 times larger than before, making it an excellent choice for large-scale simulations. With this new release, PeakView™ has once again demonstrated its commitment to providing users with the fastest and most efficient EM solver available.

Major Breakthrough in Speed and Capacity (5.2.0 onward)

  • Peakview High Capacity Solver (HCS), Peakview’s iterative EM solver engine, achieves production quality with major applications in brute-force metal fill and other large-scale EM simulations. HCS is rigorously benchmarked against Peakview’s default patented 3D DC-mmWave-TeraHz engine on accuracy and now dramatically extends the solver capacity and performance for cases that are beyond the reach of Peakview’s already world’s best direct solver engine. HCS allows solving EM problems 5-10X larger than before.

Major Enhancements_4.2.0 and onwards (Speed and Memory)

  • Charge-free Speedup

By mathematically reducing the system matrix size for charge panels that are known to have zero charges, we can achieve major speedup. This applies to internal current sheets such as when multi-sheet current with > 2 sheets. This also applies to HFD-L applications where only inductances are extracted to complement existing RC extraction. This is especially important for 5G and other mmwave applications where volume currents simulations are important.

  • Computational speedup

PeakView introduces a new computational algorithm that can reduce the condition number of problems. This allows for a 50% reduction of system matrix storage and solving time without loss of accuracy. It ensures that all observed cases achieve the consistent overall speedup.

  • Hybrid GPU/CPU Solver

To cut the solving time, PeakView has introduced a hybrid GPU/CPU solver which utilizes the advantage of GPU cards and greatly improves the simulation performance. PeakView supports NVIDIA GPU cards with CUDA compute capability greater than 3.0.

With GTX 1080 (version 6.1), an astounding 5x speedup has been observed with enabled quickEM option. Also, please note that GPU versions smaller than 6.x do not support double-precision (DP) arithmetic and hence, cannot be used without quickEM enabled. PeakView supports multiple GPUs, and in theory, a linear increase in speedup is expected with the number of GPUs used. For instance, by using two GPUs similar to GTX 1080, up to 10x speedup is expected.

Capacity

In order to maximize utilization of computational resources, PeakView™ not only uses multi-core processing capability on standalone servers, but is able to run design jobs on computing farms consisting of multi-core machines as well. In addition to making use of platform load sharing capacity (LSF), our Hierarchical EM (HEM) solution significantly reduces memory requirement and dramatically shortens the CPU time without compromising accuracy.

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