awd = wavescan??

Discussion in 'Cadence' started by Jay Smith, Apr 21, 2004.

  1. Jay Smith

    Jay Smith Guest

    Dear all,
    Is awd just the same thing as wavescan? They have a little different
    GUI, but they all contain a reulst browser, a calculator and a
    waveform window (or called graph display in wavescan package)?
    I like the wavescan better, but seems the calculator in awd is more
    powerful. Andrew or other people, could you comment on this? Is one of
    them going to be discontinued? Thanks much!
    Best regards,
    Jay
     
    Jay Smith, Apr 21, 2004
    #1
  2. Jay,

    wavescan was introduced in IC50, and is currently usable standalone - not
    through the analog design environment.

    It does have a number of features not present in awd. For example,
    the table output - which you can transpose, manipulate columns etc. Useful for
    looking at waveforms in tabular form, and also for looking at operating point
    information. Also the variety of markers and cursors and labels is much
    stronger.

    The whole look and feel is more modern of course, and also it can read both psf
    and sst2 formats - and is quicker (more noticeable for large files) to load the
    results. An example of the performance - I've read a waveform with 20 million
    points and done a windowed fft on a section of that waveform (with something
    like 16 million points in the fft - whatever the power of 2 close to that is),
    and then plotted the results. The whole operation was between 2 and 3 minutes.
    With awd I had to change the results out of AMS Designer (which is where the
    data came from) to be psf or do some complex conversion outside, and then
    awd took something like 45 minutes, and then ran out of memory...

    The calculator is pretty similar in its capabilities (at least in IC5033), and
    has a number of functions which awd doesn't have. The calculator language is
    spectreMDL, actually.

    Now, in IC5141 (out in June), wavescan will be available within the Analog
    Design Environment - initially as an option (Setup->Waveform tool). When you
    choose wavescan, all plotting from ADE will be done with wavescan, and you'll
    get the wavescan calculator, etc. However, the calculator when run this way will
    actually use SKILL syntax rather than spectreMDL syntax, in order to preserve
    compatibility for people using OCEAN, and because all the Direct Plot form stuff
    and so on is generating SKILL expressions.

    So as you can guess, the idea is to replace awd with wavescan - awd is pretty
    long in the tooth, and wavescan gives us a much more modern framework to allow
    new things to be done more easily.

    Sorry for the lengthy reply!

    Regards,

    Andrew.
     
    Andrew Beckett, Apr 22, 2004
    #2
  3. Jay Smith

    Jay Smith Guest

    Andrew, I (and other people) always can get nice advice/comment from
    you. Thank you!
    BTW, although it's fun to learn new stuff, I would really prefer to
    staying with a minimum amount of CAD tools, which are sufficient in
    terms of flexibility as well as compatibility. After all, tools are
    just "tools". So do you think Analog Artist/OCEAN (which supports many
    flavors of simulators) + wavescan will be sufficient for all
    analog/mixed signal designs? Don't want to go through SpectreMDL just
    for using the calculator...
    Best regards,
    Jay
    p.s.: Analog Artist (Analog Design Enviroment) is just an integrated
    version of OCEAN, right?

    p.s.: Doesn OCEAN use SKILL syntax? Thanks.
     
    Jay Smith, Apr 22, 2004
    #3
  4. Jay Smith

    Erik Wanta Guest

    I am not that impressed with wavescan. It seems to be just awd in
    fancier clothing. I like the Agilent data display tool. One can
    place plots, tables, and expressions anywhere on the screen just like
    mathCAD.
     
    Erik Wanta, Apr 23, 2004
    #4
  5. Hi Jay,

    I think that using Artist/OCEAN is likely to be sufficient for most things,
    although there are some nice features in MDL which may be worth being aware of
    even if you don't use them initially.

    OCEAN is really a procedural interface to the same capabilities than a simulator
    integrated into ADE gives you (it's not the other way around, since ADE preceded
    OCEAN).

    OCEAN is not a separate language from SKILL. SKILL is the language, and OCEAN is
    actually a set of SKILL functions, an API (Application Programming Interface) to
    allow you to run analog simulations. The syntax is all SKILL, but the
    documentation is such that you don't need to know much about SKILL to use OCEAN,
    although you can do more powerful things the more you know!

    Regards,

    Andrew.
     
    Andrew Beckett, Apr 26, 2004
    #5
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