EEsof
Encyclopedia
EEsof is an EDA
company founded in 1983 by an entrepreneur, Charles J. ("Chuck") Abronson, and a former Compact Software
employee, Bill Childs.
lives on. EEsof was acquired by Hewlett-Packard
in 1993 and later spun out as part of Agilent Technologies
in 1999 thus becoming Agilent EEsof EDA.
After the merger of HP and EEsof, the EEsof products were combined with the HP simulator, Microwave Design System (MDS). HP's own entry, MDS, had been introduced in 1985. It was developed in-house and comprised a linear circuit simulator with integrated schematic capture and graphical layout with back-annotation, a first for RF EDA software. MDS was offered on UNIX workstations from HP, Sun, and Apollo as well on the PC (also on UNIX). Prior to the introduction of MDS, HP had a marketing relationship with EEsof and sold Touchstone software on HP platforms such as the Series 200 (but not on the PC). The marketing relationship ended after the introduction of HP's MDS product.
The HP and EEsof harmonic balance
simulators also had parallel lives before the merger. HP funded an employee Ken Kundert to do a PhD at UC Berkeley. For his thesis he developed Spectre
, the first harmonic balance prototype. Some sources argue that since Berkeley had an open policy to all of its research work, EEsof was able to learn about the project and actually released a product, Libra, before HP was able to commercialise it in MDS. (Libra was a play on the Latin word libra for balance or scales). However, other sources say that Libra was developed completely independently. In any case, Kundert left HP to join Cadence Design Systems
shortly after receiving his PhD. There he developed Spectre
and SpectreRF
.
The GoldenGate product was added with the Xpedion acquisition. The SystemVue and Genesys products were added as a result of the acquisition of Eagleware-Elanix in 2005. In turn Eagleware-Elanix was a result of the merger of Eagleware and Elanix. Eagleware itself was founded in 1985 by Randy Rhea.
Electronic design automation
Electronic design automation is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as printed circuit boards and integrated circuits...
company founded in 1983 by an entrepreneur, Charles J. ("Chuck") Abronson, and a former Compact Software
Compact Software
Compact Software was the first successful microwave computer-aided design company.-History:The company was founded in 1973 by Les Besser to commercialize his eponymous program COMPACT , released when he was at Farinon Electric Company.COMPACT was Besser's second-generation...
employee, Bill Childs.
History
EEsof's first products included high frequency circuit simulators such as Touchstone and Libra. Although the Touchstone simulator itself is obsolete, its eponymous file formatTouchstone File
A Touchstone file was originally a proprietary file format for the eponymous frequency-domain linear circuit simulator from EEsof, launched in 1984 and now owned by Agilent Technologies....
lives on. EEsof was acquired by Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
in 1993 and later spun out as part of Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies
Agilent Technologies , or Agilent, is a company that designs and manufactures electronic and bio-analytical measurement instruments and equipment for measurement and evaluation...
in 1999 thus becoming Agilent EEsof EDA.
After the merger of HP and EEsof, the EEsof products were combined with the HP simulator, Microwave Design System (MDS). HP's own entry, MDS, had been introduced in 1985. It was developed in-house and comprised a linear circuit simulator with integrated schematic capture and graphical layout with back-annotation, a first for RF EDA software. MDS was offered on UNIX workstations from HP, Sun, and Apollo as well on the PC (also on UNIX). Prior to the introduction of MDS, HP had a marketing relationship with EEsof and sold Touchstone software on HP platforms such as the Series 200 (but not on the PC). The marketing relationship ended after the introduction of HP's MDS product.
The HP and EEsof harmonic balance
Harmonic balance
Harmonic balance is a method used to calculate the steady-state response of non-linear differential equations, and is mostly applied to electrical circuits...
simulators also had parallel lives before the merger. HP funded an employee Ken Kundert to do a PhD at UC Berkeley. For his thesis he developed Spectre
Spectre Circuit Simulator
Spectre is a SPICE-class circuit simulator. It provides the basic SPICE analyses and component models. It also supports the Verilog-A modeling language...
, the first harmonic balance prototype. Some sources argue that since Berkeley had an open policy to all of its research work, EEsof was able to learn about the project and actually released a product, Libra, before HP was able to commercialise it in MDS. (Libra was a play on the Latin word libra for balance or scales). However, other sources say that Libra was developed completely independently. In any case, Kundert left HP to join Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems
Cadence Design Systems, Inc is an electronic design automation software and engineering services company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc...
shortly after receiving his PhD. There he developed Spectre
SPECTRE
SPECTRE is a fictional global terrorist organisation featured in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, the films based on those novels, and James Bond video games...
and SpectreRF
SpectreRF
SpectreRF is an option to the Spectre Circuit Simulator from Cadence Design Systems. It adds a series of analyses that are particularly useful for RF circuits to the basic capabilities of Spectre. SpectreRF was first released in 1996 and was notable for three reasons...
.
Products
- Platforms:
- Advanced Design SystemAdvanced Design SystemAdvanced Design System is an electronic design automation software system produced by Agilent EEsof EDA , a unit of Agilent Technologies. It provides an integrated design environment to designers of RF electronic products such as mobile phones, pagers, wireless networks, satellite communications,...
– high frequency and high speed design - EMPro (formerly Antenna Modeling Design System) - 3D EM platform
- GoldenGate (supersedes RF Design Environment) - RFIC/RF mixed signal simulator
- IC-CAP - Device modeling
- Genesys - RF and microwave design
- SystemVue - Electronic system-level design
- Advanced Design System
- EM solvers:
- MomentumMomentum (electromagnetic simulator)Momentum is computer software for electronics and antenna analysis, a partial differential equation solver of Maxwell's equations based on the method of moments. It is a 3-D planar electromagnetic simulator used for passive circuit analysis....
– 3D planar, frequency domain. Available with the ADS, Genesys, and GoldenGate platforms - FEM Element (formerly Electromagnetic Design System) – full 3D, frequency domain. Available with the ADS and EMPro platforms
- FDTD Element – full 3D, time domain. Available with the EMPro platform
- Momentum
The GoldenGate product was added with the Xpedion acquisition. The SystemVue and Genesys products were added as a result of the acquisition of Eagleware-Elanix in 2005. In turn Eagleware-Elanix was a result of the merger of Eagleware and Elanix. Eagleware itself was founded in 1985 by Randy Rhea.