The Gold Standard for Accurate Parasitic Extraction and Signal Integrity Solutions

For more information, contact:

Jerry Tallinger
OEA International, Inc.
408-738-5972
jerry@oea.com

Bill Harding
Bill Harding & Associates
925-426-8989
bhardingpr@home.com

NEW RELEASE OF OEA's SPIRAL INDUCTOR DESIGN TOOL ADDS NEW CAPABILITIES AND IMPROVES EASE OF USE

Santa Clara, CA - December 12, 2000 - OEA International introduces a major update to its popular Spiral^[TM] 3D inductor design tool. Spiral is a specialized toolset for designing embedded spiral inductors in analog and RF chips, hybrids, MCMs, and PCBs. The new release includes the addition of differential spirals, "mask-ready" layouts, and automated fitting of equivalent lumped circuit models.

"OEA's Spiral inductance design tool allows designers to automatically create, analyze, and optimize a wide range of spiral inductors by providing a simple set of specifications for the desired inductor," said Haris Basit, OEA International’s vice president of business development. "This new release extends Spiral's capabilities in specific areas that our customers have requested."

With Spiral, designers create spiral inductors by specifying simple geometric parameters. The Spiral tool then automatically creates the spiral inductor to a specified number of turns or to a target inductance value. The differential spiral capability in the new release is used when designing differential circuits, such as oscillators and Gilbert cell mixers, that require well matched inductors in a minimum area.

Spiral's new mask-ready layout capability includes the ability to snap all vertices to a user-selected grid, replacing large vias with arrays of minimum-sized vias, and ensuring,  when geometrically possible, that all polygons have angles of precisely 90 degrees or 45 degrees. The ability to snap vertices to a grid is important when constructing non-rectangular spirals, and many mask-making processes require precise 90-degree and 45-degree angles.

Generating equivalent lumped circuit models, whether a simple nine-element model or a more complex distributed model, now requires only the inclusion of a keyword in the control file rather than a more complex description. This makes the generation of an equivalent circuit model very simple.

Spiral is available now, starting at $33,000 per license.  It is also available on a per-use basis on the eECAD website, starting at $3 per use.

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.