About Design Kit Development

Advanced Design System (ADS) from Agilent Technologies is a tool used by engineers for a variety of design applications, such as RFIC, System, MMIC, Hybrid or Board level design. In order to effectively use the design environment and to take advantage of its powerful simulation capabilities, designers must have a library of components that are linked to model files or simulation data.

For IC designers, the components and models are typically distributed by a foundry in the form of a design kit . A unique design kit is created for each process and each CAD tool. This kit is given to the foundry customer to use when designing their circuit. To help IC designers become more successful with our electronic design automation (EDA) software, Agilent Technologies has been working with popular foundries to provide ADS components and translated model files for distribution by the foundry to the IC designer. Many customers are also creating design kits themselves.

Design kits in ADS are not only beneficial to IC designers. This library structure can be used for any technology or process to package and distribute a reusable set of components. With the information provided in this document, design kits for use in ADS can now be created by anyone.

The intent of this manual is to educate and assist users who are developing a design kit for the first time by providing a standard methodology. In addition to providing assistance to first time design kit developers, this manual is also intended to aid in troubleshooting problems with legacy design kits and updating these kits to the new standard.

A design kit combines functionality and features of many parts of ADS. Therefore, this document contains many cross-references to other ADS documents. Familiarity with Advanced Design System, as well as prior experience with ADS's Application Extension Language (AEL), will improve your understanding of this document and the process of creating a design kit. At a higher level, understanding this document and the concepts presented in it will guide you in the development of an integrated design flow using ADS.

The final intent of this manual is to encourage standardization of ADS design kits. This includes formalizing the structure, as well as the file formats and naming conventions, for design kits used in, but not limited to, the ADS Front End Design Flow and RFIC Dynamic Link Flow . It is absolutely imperative that your design kit follows this structure to avoid conflicts with other kits. For more information, refer to Supported Design Flows.

ADS Design Kits

An ADS Design Kit is a logical grouping of files related to a set of ADS components. The design kit structure is self-contained to provide easy transfer between different users or computer platforms. All component information needed by Advanced Design System is stored within the design kit.

At a minimum, a design kit must include a component definition file, schematic symbol files (unless built-in generic symbols are used), bitmap files for the component palette or a records file for the library browser, and information for the circuit simulator in the form of a model file, data file, or a schematic or netlisted subcircuit. Additionally, other optional files can be provided to extend the functionality of the design kit.

A design kit has a directory structure that is recognized by ADS and is similar to the directory structure for the ADS installation. All files are stored in specific directories depending on the type of file. Your ADS design kit must follow this structure, as defined in Understanding the ADS Design Kit File Structure. Any deviation from this pre-defined structure can lead to serious complications with your design kit, including an inability to simulate your designs in ADS. Custom extensions within design kits can also interfere with built-in tools in ADS and cause them to fail.

The simplest way to build a design kit is to follow the tutorial steps in ADS Design Kit Tutorial of this document to create a sample design kit. You can then use the information in Basic Parts of an ADS Design Kit and Additional Parts for ADS Design Kits to tailor your kit for your specific application. A copy of all files developed in the tutorial is provided with ADS for your convenience.

The final step, using the design kit, is described in detail in Design Kit Installation and Setup. To fully understand how design kits are used, a design kit developer should also become familiar with this documentation.

Supported Design Flows

Advanced Design System is a flexible tool that can be used on its own or in conjunction with other CAE tools in a variety of design flows. An engineer using the ADS _Front to Back_ design flow enters a design in the ADS schematic editor and uses the ADS simulator for analysis. The layout is created in ADS by automatically generating it from the schematic or by manually creating the layout, or a combination of the two processes. Export tools are provided to transfer the layout to third party manufacturing tools.

An engineer using the ADS Front End design flow enters a design in the ADS schematic editor and uses the ADS simulator for analysis. The design is then re-entered in a separate layout tool. To validate the integrity of the layout, the ADS Netlist Exporter is used to create a netlist for layout vs. schematic comparison. For more information on Front End Design Flow, refer to Netlist Exporter.

An engineer using the RFIC Dynamic Link Flow enters a design in Cadence Virtuoso Schematic Capture. The design is then dynamically linked via inter-process communication (IPC) for simulation in ADS.

The _RF Design Environment_ for Cadence provides a tightly integrated EDA solution that enables RF/mixed-signal IC designers to simulate their designs directly in the Cadence environment using the ADSsim RF simulator. This enables the RF/MS IC customer to take advantage of complementary features provided by both Agilent Technologies and Cadence Design Systems. For more information on RF Design Environment, refer to the RF Design Environment documentation set at: http://www.agilent.com/find/eesof-docs/

This manual is generally focused on the ADS Front to Back and Front End design flows. For more information on the RF Design Environment and RFIC Dynamic Link flows, refer to Design Kit Development for RFDE and RFIC Dynamic Link.

Design Kits versus Libraries

Before you start to build your design kit, you should make sure that a design kit is really what you need. A design kit is a complex form of a library. Advanced Design System offers other ways to create libraries of reusable parts. The simplest method is to use the Tools > Custom Library menu pick in the schematic window.

A DesignGuide can also be viewed as a library, although the purpose is slightly different. A DesignGuide is a complete study of an application topic (e.g. amplifiers, mixers, oscillators, etc.), in the form of typical simulation schematics, data displays, and detailed reference designs.
The following are some criteria that you can use to decide what type of library you should create.

Will the technology/process be used by design engineers internally or externally?
- A design kit is better suited for external distribution.
- For internal use, a library or DesignGuide might be sufficient.
What are the simulation methods? (netlist, subcircuit, user-defined, data)
- If user-defined models, data files or model cards or subcircuit models in a netlist files are being used, a design kit is recommended.
- If a library consists strictly of schematic subcircuits, a library or DesignGuide might be sufficient.
Will your library include custom Application Extension Language (AEL) code? AEL code is used in ADS to add parameter callbacks, layout menus and custom menus.
- Once you decide to write custom code, it is no longer a simple library. A design kit is better suited to handle custom AEL code.
Will there be simulation templates?
- Both Design Kits and DesignGuides can include simulation templates. However, the emphasis on a design kit is typically related more to the models. If providing simulation templates is your main objective, ADS DesignGuides are recommended as a better method.
What is the size of your company or the staffing model of the design department?
- For a large company with many CAD tools and many processes to support, and a full time CAD manager supporting many designers, design kits are recommended. These can be installed in a controlled system location that is accessible by all.
- For medium or small companies with no full time CAD manager, who just need to share subcircuits among designers, a simple library or DesignGuide should be sufficient.

For more information on ADS DesignGuides , refer to the " DesignGuides" section in your online ADS manual set.

For more information on custom libraries, refer to Customization and Configuration.

Intended Audience

The audience intended for this information consists of a variety of people involved in design kit creation, verification, distribution and use. This audience includes design kit developers and CAD administrators as well as advanced design kit users who need to understand what the difference is between design kits before and after ADS 2001.

Supporting Multiple ADS Versions

A design kit built for external distribution needs to support multiple versions of Advanced Design System. In general, the current release plus two previous versions is the recommendation. The foundry or design kit creator should determine how far back the design kit users can realistically be expected to be supported, but customer demand may also influence the decision.

The only part of the design kit that is version dependent in ADS is a .dsn file, used for symbols or schematic subcircuits or fixed layouts. These files must be created in the OLDEST version of ADS that they need to work in. A .dsn file created in a specific version of ADS cannot be read by a previous version.

It is also important to note that new features of a design kit are added to the standard structure periodically and may not be supported as far back as the earliest version of ADS with which the kit needs to work. This document includes some examples of how to write code that will take advantage of new functionality when available but will default to the old behavior when the new functionality is not detected. For cases that are not documented, contact your Agilent Technologies sales representative or technical support with a request for direct assistance from the Agilent Technologies foundry kits team.

Design Kit Architecture Feature Changes

The following information lists features of the design kit architecture that were added or discontinued after the initial release of the standard architecture developed in ADS 2001. A full table of all supported features for the current version is provided in Design Kit File Structure.

ADS 2002

User Compiled Models as shared libraries in the bin/$ARCH directory.
Automatic loading of files in the lvs directory for the Netlist Exporter.

ADS 2002C

Automatic loading of circuit/config/ADSlibconfig.
The DesignKit > Setup Project menu item opens the Setup Current Project dialog which contains an option to Copy substrate file for Momentum . This copies the layers and preferences files from the de/defaults directory and the *.slm files in circuit/substrates to the current project.
Automatic loading of schematic templates from the circuit/templates directory.
Item definition parameter PARM_NOT_EDITED can now be used. Previously it prevented parameter callbacks from modifying parameters so its use was discouraged in design kits.

ADS 2003A

Automatic loading of .dsn circuit and symbol files in circuit/designs.
Automatic loading of artwork macros in circuit/artwork directory.
The File > New Project and New Design menu items include a pull-down menu for selecting Technology Files that are currently available in the ADS environment. If you select a design kit as the source for these files, the layers and preferences files from the de/defaults directory and the *.slm files from the circuit/substrates directory of the selected design kit will be copied to the current project.
Automatic loading of custom help files when an hs*_index file is detected in the doc directory.
Recognition of DRC rules files in the drc/rules directory.
Automatic loading of expressions in the expressions/ael directory.
Added a new palette management function dk_define_palette_group().
New AEL functions available for adding custom menus.
Discontinued support for bin/aix4 and bin/hpux10 in ADS 2003A. These can still be used for backward compatibility.

ADS 2003C

Added support for Linux-Red Hat 7.2 and 7.3.

ADS 2004A

Added Edge and Area pins.

ADS 2005A

Added support for Spectre-Compatible Process Design Kits. This includes support for nested and inline subcircuits, process variation and mismatch, structural if, Bsource translation, mixed boolean algebraic expressions, and Spectre library selection.

For more information, refer to the Spectre-Compatible Process Design Kits documentation in the RF Design Environment documentation set. The RFDE documentation set can be accessed from the Agilent EEsof EDA Web site is at:http://www.agilent.com/find/eesof-docs/

ADS 2006A

Added support for 64-bit user compiled models.

Supported Platforms for ADS and RFDE

Supported platforms for past releases of Advanced Design System are listed in the tables below. For information on determining platform dependent subdirectories on your system, refer to The 'bin/$SIMARCH' Directory.

ADS	HP-UX	AIX	Solaris	Linux	Windows
2001	HP-UX 10.2 & 11.0	AIX 4.3	SunOS 5.6, 5.7, & 5.8	x	Win 98, NT 4.0, & 2000
2002	HP-UX 10.2, 11.0, & 11i	AIX 4.3	SunOS 5.7 & 5.8	x	Win 98, NT 4.0, & 2000
2002C	HP-UX 11.0 & 11i	AIX 4.3	Solaris 7 & 8	x	Win NT 4.0 sp6, 2000 sp1, & XP
2003A	HP-UX 11.0 & 11i	x	Solaris 7, 8, & 9	x	Win NT 4.0 sp6a, 2000 sp3, & XP sp1
2003C	HP-UX 11.0 & 11i	x	Solaris 7, 8, & 9	x	Win NT 4.0 sp6a, 2000 sp3, & XP sp1
2004A	HP-UX 11.0 & 11i	x	Solaris 8 & 9	Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, & 8	Win 2000 sp4 & XP sp1
2005A	HP-UX 11.0 & 11i	x	Solaris 8, 9, & 10	Red Hat 7.2, 7.3, & 8	Win 2000 sp4 & XP sp2
2006A-32bit	HP-UX 11.0 & 11i	x	Solaris 8, 9, & 10	Redhat RHEL WS 3.x, WS 4.x, Novell SUSE SLES 9	Win 2000 SP4 & XP SP2.
2006A-64bit	Not supported	x	Solaris 8, 9, & 10	Redhat RHEL WS 3.x, 4.0, Novell SUSE SLES 9	Win XP X64
2008-32 bit	Not supported	x	Solaris 10	RedHat Enterprise4, Novell SUSE SLES 9	Win XP SP2 & Vista
2008-64 bit	Not supported	x	Solaris 10	RedHat Enterprise4	Win XP X64

For historical information on supported platforms for RF Design Environment, refer to Cadence Library Integration.

Support for Additional Capability

If you are creating a design kit that needs some capability that is not included in this document or is not supported by Advanced Design System, the ADS Design Kit team at the factory would like to understand the situation. There might be a solution that has not yet been documented or we may choose to add it based on a demonstrated need and mutual, widespread benefit.

For more information, contact your Agilent Technologies sales representative or technical support with a request to submit a suggestion to the ADS Design Kit team at the factory.

What is in this Manual

This manual contains all the information needed to create a design kit for use in an ADS Design Flow . Most of the details are applicable for all work involving design kit creation but some optional steps may be skipped for simpler kits or smaller installations.

Following the standard structure will ensure that your design kit will not conflict with other design kits in use by your customers.

Included in this document are details of the directory structure, how to create the specific files needed by the system, which files are required and which are optional, and different ways to include your model information.

Understanding the ADS Design Kit File Structure gives an overview of the directory structure of a standard ADS design kit, followed by a summary of the types of files in each directory.
ADS Design Kit Tutorial describes in detail how to create the files in a basic design kit.
Basic Parts of an ADS Design Kit describes the fundamental parts of an ADS design kit.
Completing the Design Kit discusses what to do after your design kit has been created.
Design Kit Development for Layout provides information related to adding layout information to your design kit.
Additional Parts for ADS Design Kits describes the details of the parts of a design kit that were not covered in Basic Parts of an ADS Design Kit.
ADS Design Kit Standard provides a summary of the design kit standard as well as the process of standardizing design kits developed prior to ADS 2001.
Design Kit Development for RFDE and RFIC Dynamic Link includes a brief discussion of the differences between ADS Front End Design Flow kits and design kits using the RFIC Dynamic Link Flow for Cadence.
ADS Design Kit Development for IFF briefly discusses design kit development for use with intermediate file format (IFF) files.