AWR Application Notes

Using Parallel and Remote Schematic Simulation and Optimization to Reduce Design Time

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Using Parallel and Remote Schematic Simulation and Optimization to Reduce Design Time 2 www.cadence.com/go/awr Evolution of Remote/Parallel Simulation in AWR Software To provide designers with access to more compute power for complex designs, AWR software has evolved to support various remote/parallel simulation features. Remote computing allows users to set up an EM simulation in the AWR AXIEM or AWR Analyst solver on a local computer and simulate the structure on a different computer. By setting up dedicated, remote computers for resource-intensive simulations, designers can use local computers to continue working on other design tasks or perform smaller simulation problems. Remote and parallel computing for circuit-based simulations was introduced to address growing design complexity. Circuit simulations usually take considerably less simulation time than EM simulations, often on the order of seconds. However, with the increasing size of RF/microwave intellectual property (IP) integration at both the IC and module packaging levels, it is often necessary to simulate these circuits with large embedded S-parameter models comprising of hundreds to almost a thousand input/output (I/O) ports over many frequency points. Networks containing these large broadband S-parameter files can take a much longer time to simulate. Simulation Times for Different Configurations Figure 1 illustrates the length of time it takes to run a simulation job with the four different options: local, local parallel, remote, and remote parallel. The timeline illustrates how simulation time can be cut dramatically from almost an hour to six minutes, depending on the configuration used. Figure 1: Comparison of simulation times depending upon which computing configuration is used In this one example, running a circuit simulation as a local job took 52 minutes. Parallelizing it to run three jobs locally on a multi-core computer reduced the simulation time to 36 minutes. To further shorten simulation time, six different remote computers can be used with one job each, taking just 12 minutes. If the parallel and remote jobs are combined to run three parallel jobs on each of six remote computers, the simulation takes only six minutes. In addition to the time savings, this enables designers to share high-end hardware resources and multitask while continuing to work locally as the simulations run elsewhere. This capability enhances productivity by freeing the designer to consider more variants for improvements to the end product. Table 1 shows several user examples and the time it took for particular simulations. Table 1: User examples for different simulation types Looking at the swept EM simulation, our example reflects a reduction in simulation times from 105 minutes down to 18 minutes. The number of remote machines and the number of parallel machines respectively are shown in parenthesis. For example, the circuit schematic optimization (6,3) test case refers to a simulation that ran on six different remote machines, each running three jobs each, for a total of 18 jobs. The simulation time was cut from the local simulation time of 52 minutes to six minutes using the remote parallel approach. In general, most of the run times in this chart decreased with the addition of remote and parallel computing. However, under certain configurations, the run times increased. This is the result of not having enough memory resources on the local computer, which is why running remotely offers a distinct speed advantage. Simulation speeds will be impacted by problem type. Decomposition Type Local Local Parallel Remote Remote Parallel Swept EM Simulation 105 min (1,1) 88 min (1,2) 20 min (6,1) 18 min (6,2) Multiple Circuit Schematics 44 min (1,1) 48 min (1,3) 10 min (6,1) 9 min (6,3) Circuit Schematic Optimization 52 min (1,1) 38 min (1,3) 12 min (6,1) 6 min (6,3)

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