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oermens

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Question about RFDE/GoldenGate
Jul 11^th, 2009, 10:07am

Hi,

Our university department currently has a license for ADS Premier suite, but except for Momentum it is barely being used because all of us are more comfortable working with Cadence and no one wants to spend more time to learn a new tool. We do agree that having the Agilent suite would be beneficial though, so when we renew our license I think we should go with RFDE this time. From my understanding, RFDE is the same tools as ADS (we are particularly interested in ADSsim, Momentum and PLL Simulator) but integrated into Cadence DFII - is this correct? Is RFDE 2009 compatible with both Cadence IC5141 and IC613? I've already done some of the setup to integrate RFDE into DFII (ADSsim is an option in ADE and RFDE is part of ICFB->Tools menu) so once we get a license I guess we could start using it right away. Anyone have experience and feedback on ADS vs RFDE?

Thanks

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RFICDUDE

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Re: Question about RFDE/GoldenGate
Reply #1 - Jul 12^th, 2009, 7:00pm

My recent experience has been that the RFDE interface to Momentum within Virtuoso layout is very close to the ADS interface except for the following:

1: The substrate definition setup in the RFDE Momentum interface seems a little different than ADS. The ADS GUI is a little easier to use than the RFDE setup and substrate definition tool.

2. Port definitions are not as straight forward in RFDE as ADS. In ADS you place ports then change the definition of the port using the port editor feature. In RFDE, ports seem to be defined by pins in the layout, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to specify exactly what definition each port should be.

Other than the issues above, the RFDE interface with Virtuoso is useful.

The port definition ambiguity in RFDE has prevented me from extensively using the feature. I still import GDSII into ADS from Cadence.

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oermens

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Re: Question about RFDE/GoldenGate
Reply #2 - Jul 12^th, 2009, 8:16pm

Thanks for your reply. Just a few questions to clarify...

RFICDUDE wrote on Jul 12^th, 2009, 7:00pm:

1: The substrate definition setup in the RFDE Momentum interface seems a little different than ADS. The ADS GUI is a little easier to use than the RFDE setup and substrate definition tool.

Does RFDE Momentum have any problems reading .slm and .lay substrate and layer definitions? Does it use LSW or have its own layer panel?

Edit: Found the answer to this one, RFDE Momentum reads substrate information in .tch format, which also comes with my PDK.

RFICDUDE wrote on Jul 12^th, 2009, 7:00pm:

2. Port definitions are not as straight forward in RFDE as ADS. In ADS you place ports then change the definition of the port using the port editor feature. In RFDE, ports seem to be defined by pins in the layout, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to specify exactly what definition each port should be.

So there is no way to define if the port is single/common mode, differential, ground reference, etc? Or there isn't an easy way to do so?

We'll probably download RFDE 2009 now and play around with a trial license before deciding whether or not we should move over to RFDE. Thanks again for the info.

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« Last Edit: Jul 13^th, 2009, 6:37am by oermens »

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