I talked with See-Mei Chan, Technical Marketing Manager at Mentor this morning because we couldn’t connect in Anaheim earlier this week. I wanted to better understand what is new with Eldo, the SPICE circuit simulator at Mentor.
Q: How is Eldo different than BDA or Cadence APS?
A: We added multi-threading to Eldo two years ago but didn’t give it any new marketing name like BDA and Cadence APS did.
Q: What new features do you plan for Eldo?
A: Look for multi-rate and look-up tables to be added.
Q: Does Eldo support Transient Noise Analysis?
A: Yes, we added that 15 years ago.
Q: What kind of speed improvements should I expect with multi-core?
A: Eldo threads both device equations and matrix solving, so on an 8 core CPU expect about 7X speed up and with 4 cores about 3X speed up.
Q: What about using multiple CPUs in a network?
A: For statistical simulations Eldo will spread out the jobs across multiple CPUs on a network.
Q: What’s new with Questa ADMS?
A: We are now supporting the W real element, a new net type from Verilog AMS for simulating real numbers in Verilog and VHDL designs.
Q: What do AMS customers like about Mentor tools?
A: We have a number one position in AMS simulation because our tools are easier to setup and simulate, plus the tools are robust allowing you to mix and match languages without crashing.
Q: What do you think about CyberEDA?
A: It’s a young company so we haven’t really seen them in any benchmarks yet.
Q: What’s coming for ADiT?
A: Expect to see support for hierarchical simulation of large memories.
Q: What’s new in ADiT this year?
A: The biggest improvement added was support for multi-rate, giving simulation speed improvements.
Q: What is ADiT Rail all about?
A: Stay tuned for more details later this year.
