What's New in Release 11 - Full Release

Sonnet Suite - What's New

Sonnet User’s Manuals are only updated with each full release. However, our online help is also available at our web site and will periodically be updated with new material. To access this help, go to www.sonnetsoftware.com/support  and click on the "Knowledge Base" link for the most recent updates.

This release is version 11.56 which is an upgrade from version 11.54. If you are upgrading from release 10, then you will wish to refer to both Version 11.52, Version 11.54 and Version 11.56 below for all the changes in the software. If you are upgrading from version 11.52, you need to read the Version 11.54 and Version 11.56 section below. If you are upgrading from version 11.54, you only need to read the Version 11.56 section below.

Version 11.56

For what’s new in version 11.56 since version 11.54, see below.

Windows Vista Operating System: Sonnet Cluster now supports the Windows Vista® Operating System.

Reconnect and Recover functionality for emCluster® using Platform LSF: This release allows you to reconnect to an ongoing analysis job or recover a completed analysis job from the LSF Cluster. When running an analysis on a LSF cluster, it is possible that you could submit an analysis job to the LSF cluster, but do not want to stay logged in and connected from the client host the entire time an analysis is running. The recover and reconnect functions allows you to reconnect or recover an analysis from which you have disconnected. This also allows you to recover analysis data in the event of a computer crash, or network failure that prevents the server host from communicating with the client. Look under “recover“ in the Index of online help, then select the topic “How do I recover a project from the analysis server?” from the list which appears. To access online help, select Help => Contents from the main menu of any Sonnet application.

Sonnet Cluster Improvements: Changes have been implemented for Sonnet Cluster to improve processing efficiency and ease of use.

• Error handling has been enhanced so that performance is more robust.

• Processing efficiency has been increased especially in projects that create a large amount of data.

• If a master computer is also being used as a slave computer, the project is no longer moved to a different location for slave processing but instead done where the project was placed on the master computer. This both saves processing time and reduces processing overhead.

• Improvements have been made to the recovery and reconnect functions such that it is now easier to disconnect from a job, and more information is provided when a reconnect or recover action is performed.

Remote em Improvements:

• Processing efficiency has been increased.

• Improvements have been made to the recovery and reconnect functions such that it is now easier to disconnect from a job, and more information is provided when a reconnect or recover action is performed.

Broadband Spice Extractor Port Numbering Bug Fixed: In previous releases, ports were numbered incorrectly in a Broadband Spice output file which contained more than 100 ports. This bug has been fixed and all ports are now numbered correctly.

Improved remote em capability in Translator Interfaces: Bug fixes have been made in the Agilent ADS Interface, Cadence Virtuoso interface, and AWR’s Microwave Office Interface that improve their capability to use remote em for their analysis server.

Cadence Virtuoso® Interface: The following changes have been made to the Cadence Virtuoso Interface.

• The Cadence Virtuoso Interface is now compatible with the ClioSoft Design Management Software.

• In earlier releases (11.52 and 11.54), you could not re-import models from Sonnet into the Cadence environment which contained 10 or more ports. This bug has been fixed and you may now use an unlimited number of ports in your models.

Agilent’s ADS® 2008 Compatibility: This version of Sonnet is compatible with Agilent’s ADS 2008.

Version 11.54

For what’s new in version 11.54 since version 11.52, see below.

Reconnect and Recover functionality for emCluster® using Sonnet Networking (Sonnet Cluster): When running an analysis on a Sonnet cluster, it is possible that the analysis client could submit an analysis job to the master server, then not be there to receive the status of an ongoing job or the completed job from the master computer. The analysis client may not be available for a variety of reasons: a computer crash, the user who submitted the job has logged out of the analysis client, or there is a network failure that prevents the master computer from communicating with the analysis client. This release allows you to reconnect to an ongoing analysis job or recover a completed analysis job from the master computer. See the File => Recover Disconnected Jobs command for details.

Sonnet Cluster Multicore Server Support: In release 11.52, Sonnet Cluster did not support using multiple cores or CPUs on a system as separate servers; only one core per computer could be used. Having multiple servers on the same computer is now supported with each slave working on a different frequency. For example, if you have a multi-core system with four cores, it is now possible to set up those cores as four separate slaves on the cluster each operating on a different frequency.

Bug Fixes: Fixes for various bugs in release 11.52 have been implemented in this release.

Beta Test of Anisotropic Dielectric Layers: This release introduces a new capability in the area of dielectric layer modeling. Anisotropic Dielectric Layers make it possible for you to work with uniaxial anisotropic materials and specify separate values for the material Z-component material properties that may differ from the lateral (X-Y) properties. Typically, it is the Relative Permittivity Z-component value (erz), which is of greatest interest, but the user you may also specify Dielectric Loss Tangent, Dielectric Conductivity, Relative Permeability, and Magnetic Loss Tangent values for the dielectric separately in the Z direction. This feature, allows the user who is working with enables you to work with unique (often crystalline) materials the ability to accurately capture their behavior. For example, one of the more common anisotropic materials is sapphire. The erx and ery (lateral) values are typically listed as approximately 11.5, while the erz is approximately 10.0. Instead of making approximations in the material properties,the user you can now directly enter these values and get accurate results – without the guesswork.

In this software release, the anisotropic dielectric layer feature is at beta stage and not enabled by default. The analysis engine fully handles the EM theory involved with these materials and internal testing has been performed. If you are interested in modeling anisotropic materials, please contact Sonnet Technical Support or your Sonnet sales representative to learn more about this feature and how to activate it.

Sonnet Cluster Documentation: This release includes documentation on Sonnet Cluster in both the manuals and help. For information about Sonnet Cluster in the manuals, see the Setting Up emCluster® document available on the Installation and Administration page of the manual interface. To open the manual interface, click on the "Manuals" button on the Sonnet task bar.

Version 11.52

Below is a summation of the major new features in release 11 of Sonnet. Follow the links for more details. For changes from release 10, refer to the changes section later in this topic.

Co-calibrated Internal Ports & Calibration Groups: Co-Calibrated Internal Ports introduce perfectly calibrated connections on the interior of circuitry so that models may be connected in your favorite frequency or time domain circuit simulator.  For instance, Co-Calibrated Ports might be used for calibrated internal connections for later attachment of a sophisticated non-linear transistor model in an electrical circuit simulation.   The co-calibrated ports are associated with a calibration group.  All of the ports in a calibration group share a common ground and are de-embedded simultaneously during the analysis to remove all cross-coupling them—even if they are very closely spaced.  There is no limitation on how many ports may be in a calibration group.    For a detailed discussion of co-calibrated internal ports, see Co-calibrated Internal Ports.

You may also refer to the "Ports" chapter in the Sonnet User's Guide.

Components: The "Component," a new object in Sonnet, is introduced in this release.  A Component is used to include an electrical or circuit theory model into your electromagnetic simulation.  The electrical model may be an ideal component (such as an ideal capacitor), or a data model component (such as a vendor S-parameter model for a surface mount transistor or amplifier).  The EM analysis engine, em, uses circuit theory to attach the specified component to your geometry for the simulation, or creates ports which may be connected in a circuit simulation tool.  Components are based on a new de-embedding technology used for co-calibrated ports .For more information on Components, see Components.

There is also a chapter on Components in the Sonnet User's Guide.

64 Bit Processing: Version 11 of Sonnet introduces the new 64-bit processing analysis engine. The 64-bit processing analysis engine is automatically installed when you install Sonnet. Using the 64-bit processing requires that you have a 64-bit operating system. The 64-bit analysis engine will only be used if the project you are analyzing requires more than 3.2 Gbytes of memory. Below that threshold, the 32-bit processing analysis engine will be used. The switch is made automatically by the software. Projects which require below 3.2 Gbytes of memory are analyzed more quickly using the 32-bit engine; however, the 64-bit engine can analyze problems too big for the 32-bit engine to handle. See the appropriate installation manual for requirements.

New Agilent Interface: In this release we introduce a new Agilent ADS Interface which is significantly more integrated than in previous Sonnet releases.  The new interface enables you to setup and run your simulations all without leaving the ADS environment, and provides and intuitive, easy-to-use GUI interface.  Existing layout projects in ADS can be used to instantly create accompanying Sonnet projects, including Momentum project information.  Sonnet extraction models created during EM simulation are automatically imported into ADS, along with a schematic "layout look-alike" symbol and accompanying model layout.  Sonnet models may also incorporate the new Co-Calibrated Ports or Components features.

 For all the details on the new interface, see the Translators manual.

emCluster using Platform LSF: Release 10.53 introduced a new Sonnet product, emCluster using Platform LSF (LSF Cluster), which allows your Sonnet em analysis to interface with Platform Computing’s Load Sharing Facility (LSF) cluster computing software to improve the efficiency and processing time of your Sonnet analyses. Sonnet’s LSF Cluster feature provides you with the ability to split your analysis project into multiple jobs which may then be processed in parallel on a computer cluster to greatly reduce your processing time. You may also take advantage of LSF Cluster’s ability to choose a server host computer based on analysis size, licensing considerations, loading, time of day, etc. For example, smaller jobs may be sent to a computing host reserved just for them to avoid waiting behind a larger job which requires substantially more processing time.

For detailed instructions on setting up LSF Cluster, please refer to the Setting Up emCluster document available in PDF format on the Administration and Installation page of the Manual interface. For a detailed discussion on using LSF Cluster, please refer to the "emCluster using LSF (LSF Cluster)" chapter in the Sonnet User's Guide.

emCluster using Sonnet networking: This release introduces a new module in emCluster, emCluster using Sonnet networking (Sonnet Cluster). Sonnet Cluster allows you distribute your processing across a cluster of computers but without the need for LSF software. Documentation for this feature was not available at the time of this printing; please contact your Sonnet representative about receiving documentation on this feature.

Markers in the Response Viewer: This release introduces Markers, a new feature in the response viewer. Markers allow you to annotate a plot in the response viewer to help you more easily interpret your data and more clearly present your data to others. Markers are available under the Graph Menu in the response viewer main menu. There are six types of markers: Data, Curve, Vertical Line, Horizontal Line, Delta and Note. For details, see Graph => Marker.

New Cadence Virtuoso Utilities Available: There are two new utilities available for the Sonnet Virtuoso Interface. The first utility, the Symbol Model Utility may be used to create a symbol view from a Sonnet Broadband Spice model file in the Spectre format (.scs). This utility program is independent of the Sonnet Virtuoso interface and may be run separately. The second utility, Substrate Conversion, is for converting an Agilent Substrate file (.tch) into a Sonnet Substrate File (.matl) which may be used in the Sonnet Virtuoso interface.

 For more details, please see the "Cadence Virtuoso Interface” in the Translators manual.

Export to DXF New Features: Changes have been made to the export to DXF command in the project editor. The following features are now supported:

• Trace and Via information exported to separate DXF layers

• Sonnet Vias may be converted to Circular Vias in DXF

• Different Materials on the same Sonnet level can be exported to separate DXF layers

For more details, please see File => Export => DXF. 

Changes

Below is a summation of the major changes in release 11 of Sonnet. Follow the links for more details.

Cadence Virtuoso Interface Menu Change: In release 10.52, when you opened a layout view in Cadence’s Virtuoso, the Sonnet-Virtuoso menu automatically appeared in the main menu. Since release 10.53, you must first select Tools => Sonnet from the layout view’s main menu in order for the Sonnet-Virtuoso menu to be loaded in the layout view.

For more details, please to the Cadence Virtuoso chapter  in the Translators  manual.

New FLEXlm Licensing Manager: This release of Sonnet Software uses FLEXnet Licensing 10.8 in place of FLEXlm, the former license manager. In previous releases, it was possible to install a new version of Sonnet Software while retaining the old installation and have both versions of the software use the same license server simultaneously. This is not possible with the new license manager since the format of Sonnet’s licensing files has changed. You can continue to use your old license with FLEXlm as your license manager, but the two types of licensing managers cannot run simultaneously on the same license server. For more details on licensing, see How does Sonnet licensing work?.

Thick Metal Modeling: In release 10.52, if you used more than two sheets of metal to model your thick metal, then the interior sheets were modeled using only a ring of metal on the edge of the polygon. This was changed for this release so that all sheets in the thick metal model are now modeled as full sheets. This was done to improve the accuracy of the loss at low frequency. Also, the subsectioning for thick metal has been made more efficient. In some cases, these changes may increase or decrease the total number of subsections; therefore, the memory requirement of your circuit may change from release 10.52.

HSpice Compatibility: PSpice files ("lib") which are generated by Sonnet when creating Broadband Spice model (see Analysis => Output Files in the project editor or Output => Broadband Model File in the response viewer) are now compatible with HSpice.

The Spice Model created now only uses positive elements except for one condition. If the model contains a very small resistor then a positive and a negative resistor are connected in series such that the sum of the two resistors is the equivalent of the small resistor needed in the model. In this case, HSpice will issue a warning about the negative resistance but the model will be valid.

Multi-Frequency Caching:  The multi-frequency caching run option is no longer available in this release.

Turning Object Snap Off: When you open an existing geometry project or create a new geometry project, the Object Snap option in the Snap Setup dialog box (Tools => Snap Setup) is "on" by default. If you do not wish to have Object Snap "on" by default when you open a geometry project, refer to How do I default to "off" for Object Snap?