Designers, consultants, engineering students can use the tool for only $3 per run

Santa Clara, CA - December 15, 2000 - OEA International's SPIRAL inductor analysis and design tool is used to design, characterize, and optimize spiral inductors on silicon, GaAs, ceramic, and printed circuit boards, for use in RF, analog, and wireless communications applications. This new, powerful tool, which licenses for $40,000 per seat, is also available on the eECAD web site for as little as $3 per run. The eECAD web site allows advanced EDA tools to be accessed on a per-use basis rather than a per-seat license.

"This is an exceptional opportunity for designers with limited budgets to access one of the industry's most powerful analog and mixed-signal design tools for a very reasonable cost," said Haris Basit, vice president for program development at OEA. "This will be especially beneficial to consultants who need the SPIRAL tool's capabilities, but who can't afford a permanent license. It will also be useful to university engineering departments where SPIRALusage could be incorporated in lab fees, thus enabling engineering students to gain experience with tools of this caliber."

With the growing importance of analog and mixed-signal design in high-performance semiconductor devices, engineers need more than traditional digital EDA tools. The Spiral inductor tool is one of the newer members of the OEA International family of advanced analog and mixed-signal design tools.

Some of the SPIRAL tool's more important characteristics are:

• Uses field simulations to output fully coupled, optimally sectioned RCLM, S-parameter, and Z-parameter models
• Generates single-metal, double-metal, double-deck, and differential spirals
• Includes skin and substrate effects
• Builds a GDSII layout of the finished spiral design
• Optimizes layout and fits simplified models

Spiral is the first of several of OEA's advanced signal integrity, mixed-signal, and analog design tools that will be made available via the eECAD service. For a full description of OEA's tools, visit www.oea.com. For information on how to access SPIRAL on eECAD, visit www.eecad.com/oea.

About OEA International, Inc.
OEA International, Inc. designs and licenses state-of-the-art signal integrity software for the electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) industry.   OEA's software is designed to be extremely high performance and handle very complex models with a high degree of accuracy.  OEA products are used to substantially increase engineering productivity and first time success in the design of interconnect and packaging technologies for sophisticated electronic systems and integrated circuits.  For additional information, call 408-738-5972, or visit OEA online at http://www.oea.com.