O-Wave
Optimal’s O-Wave is a powerful full-wave 3D EM analysis solution that allows engineers to perform extremely accurate signal integrity analysis for IC package, System-in-Package (SiP), and PCB designs. O-Wave supports the multi-GHz (MGH) frequency range and is able to create fully-coupled simultaneous switching noise (SSN) models. O-Wave is typically 2-3X faster than competitive solutions and has the capacity to analyze large structures in a memory-efficient manner. This performance and capacity advantage, coupled with unparalleled ease of use and the tightest integration with the most popular design flows provides our customers with the best overall design cycle time.


Powerful Capabilities for Full Wave Signal Integrity and SSN Analysis
O-Wave includes many technical breakthroughs that increase your productivity by allowing you to spend more time designing and less time preparing a project for simulation or waiting for an analysis to complete. O-Wave also gives you capabilities, including the ability to create fully-coupled SSN models of high-speed devices from full-wave simulations.

High-speed signals couple where least expected, and the faster they are, the more challenges they present. For example, coupling between signals and planes can cause noise to be introduced on the planes in the form of switching noise. To avoid noise problems in high-speed MGH devices, you must be able to accurately simulate the devices’ IOs and their interconnect during the design process. Accurate simulations require both:

	Full-Wave modeling of package, SiP and PCB interconnect
	Coupled models that describe interconnect and plane interaction

Before O-Wave, you could generate either fully-coupled parasitic models or independent full-wave simulations of traces and planes.

Models can be generated for true high-speed SSN simulation by combining the signal analysis results from O-Wave with plane analysis results from Optimal’s PowerGrid, resulting in a comprehensive fully-coupled, full-wave model.

	Accurate electrical models of 3D geometries in MGH IC packages, SiPs and PCBs
	An efficient way of getting CAD projects into an EM simulator and preparing for analysis
	High capacity that can handle millions of unknowns with reasonable memory requirements
	Fast simulations that give you results quickly
	The ability to simulate real 3D structures, not limit you to basic 2D or 2.5D planar approximations
	The ability to look at all critical interactions: signal-signal, signal-plane and plane-plane
	An EM simulator that does not require you to have a PhD in numerical electromagnetics to use properly

Key Technologies
O-Wave uses technologically advanced techniques, most of which are uniquely available:

Finite Element Method: the most mature and robust technique for solving EM circuit problems

Adaptive Geometric Multi-grid: provides an efficient method of automatic, adaptive mesh refinement that does not discard previous solutions, but builds on those results, resulting in fast run times and superior memory efficiency. This allows engineers to solve large analysis problems faster than with other solutions.

Algebraic Multi-grid (AMG): minimizes the number of unknowns to further increase the size of projects that can be solved for a given amount of memory.

Adjacent Structure Coupling: combines signal and power coupled models from O-Wave with plane models from PowerGrid to provide fully coupled full-wave models for performing SSN simulations on large, high speed devices.

Ease-of-Use
With O-Wave, you are not forced to trade off advanced technology for ease-of-use. A new O-Wave user can become proficient in a matter of 1 or 2 days, and new projects can be set up to run in O-Wave in minutes. How is this possible? Here’s how:

	Direct database importing from popular CAD tools
	A step-by-step user interface designed specifically for setting up package, SiP and PCB analysis projects
	Intelligent port and boundary condition selection
	Graphical viewing capabilities for verifying geometries and selecting nets for analysis
	Automatic tunnel boundary generation for eliminating features that do not affect the nets being simulated
	Automatic geometry simplification to reduce the number of unknowns.

Output Results

	S, Y, Z-parameter plots
	Smith Charts
	Touchstone format
	S-parameters, SPICE circuits, RLGC parameters, TDR
	Field contour maps

CAD Interfaces

	IC: GDSII
	IC Package: Gerber, Cadence Allegro, Encore BGA, Mentor Graphics MCM Station, Zuken CR-5000
	PCB: Gerber, Cadence Allegro

System Requirements

	Minimum 512 MB of memory (1 GB or more recommended)
	Minimum 2 GB available storage space
	Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP