pancho_hideboo wrote on Mar 12th, 2010, 7:18am:http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1232855139- Concept of Simulator Use Model is fairly different compared to Agilent RFDE(ADSsim) and Cadence Spectre.
- Versatilities as Simulator are poor compared to Agilent RFDE(ADSsim).
- There are still many many bugs especially regarding user interface in ADE.
- Standard Verilog-A Compiler(va2gg) is very buggy.
Note : We can choose two compilers, Verilog-A (va2gg) or Verilog-AMS (tiburon) in GoldenGate.
- Timedomain Solvers(Time Shooting and Time Balance) are not available for autonomous circuits in current Agilent GoldenGate.
- Timedomain Solvers(Time Shooting and Time Balance) are not available for QPSS type analysis in current Agilent GoldenGate. They are available only for PSS type analysis.
- We can not set initial current of inductor for Transient Analysis of GoldenGate
- We can not set node voltage for AC and SP Analysis of GoldenGate
- We have to use "qWave" which is a special plot tool for GoldenGate if we will utilize full ability of GoldenGate, e.g. monte calro.
- ".biaschk"(=Assertion) abilities are not available in GoldenGate
- Transient Noise Analysis is not available in GoldenGate
- HSPICE netlist is not supported in GoldenGate. But I think it will be supported in very near future.
- HB Analysis of GoldenGate support upto three tones.
- We have to specify S-parameter file as absolute path for NPORT
- We can't use ADS's system model library in GoldenGate
- Quad CPU licenses are available as one package price in GoldenGate
- Multiple parameters sweep simulation and their plotting are good and easy to use
- HB Analysis of three tone having many harmonics can converge very quickly
- Optimizer using runtime measurement which is called as "performance" is available as standard ability.
- We can use three plotting tools, Cadence Wavescan, Agilent ADS Data Display and Agilent qWave.
- Virtual source ability which can override signal sources in schematic is available
- We can do linear and nonlinear stability analysis without specifying feedback loop.
- We don't have to kick start oscillator in both Transient and HB Analyses. Perturbations for startup are inserted automatically if needed.
- Small signal noise analysis is available in Envelope Analysis of GoldenGate.
- We can consider local phase noise effects by using "NOISECOR: File-based Correlated Noise Source" as well as NF effects of signal path in GoldenGate.
Totally I feel Agilent EEsof don't put much importance in RFIC business.
This is one of reason why I don't recommend Agilent GoldenGate.
ADSsim has been improved to be able to read Cadence Spectre netlist directly for RFDE.
But Agilent terminated development of RFDE at ADS2009. Last version of RFDE is RFDE2009 based on ADS2009.
So there is no RFDE for ADS2009Update1.
Now I feel ADSsim will be improved and enhanced to have more linkage with Synopsys HSPICE not Cadence Spectre.