Cadence is Driving into the Future with Computational Fluid Dynamics

For all 30+ years of our history, Cadence has created technologies to design and optimize the performance of electronics and the fabrication of the resulting integrated circuits, chip packages, and printed circuit boards. As a leader in the semiconductor industry, we see an industry need to design electronics and optimize their performance in the context of the system environment and the demands of the intended application. One of the key technologies used for the design of electronics and mechanical systems is computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and Cadence is expanding from EDA into CFD to address these design challenges.

Changes in System Design

Everything we create—including computers, robots, automobiles, boats, and planes—is becoming ever-more sophisticated and complex. The result is a hyper-convergence of design domains. Since we are increasingly pushing the boundaries of what is possible, it is no longer feasible to design products and systems based on “intuition” alone. Furthermore, cost, time, and resource limitations mean that evolving a series of physical prototypes is no longer a viable design strategy. The solution is to employ appropriate computer simulations to investigate the behavior of the system in the virtual world.

In physics, the term “field” refers to a physical quantity that has a value for each point in space and time. Meanwhile, the term “multiphysics” is defined as processes or systems involving multiple simultaneously occurring physical fields. In addition to standing for “physical field,” the “physics” portion of the “multiphysics” appellation also refers to common types of physical processes, including heat transfer (thermo-), water movement (hydro-), stress, and strain (mechano-), dynamics (dyno-), electrostatics (electro-) and magnetostatics (magneto-). Multiphysics spans many science and engineering disciplines, and multiphysics simulations use computers and software to predict and/or validate what will happen in the real world.

CFD - If It Flows, It's a Fluid

One important difference of CFD from the world of EDA is the space of analysis. Most EDA is focused on creating and analyzing the design itself into a chip, package, or printed circuit board (PCB). With CFD, we are analyzing the impact and interaction of the design with its environment. Oftentimes, the environment is the biggest part of the analysis space. 

Cadence already has a strong presence in the multiphysics simulation world with tools like the Clarity 3D Transient Solver (see 'Bringing Clarity to System Analysis') and the Celsius Thermal Solver (see ‘Celsius: Thermal and Electrical Analysis Together at Last’). The Clarity and Celsius solvers support electrothermal co-simulation; that is, performing electromagnetic (EM) analysis using the Clarity 3D Transient Solver in conjunction with thermal analysis using the Celsius Thermal Solver.

The term “fluid” refers to any substance that flows. Although liquids are the most commonly recognized fluids, gases and heat are also fluidic. CFD is a form of multiphysics simulation that is used to simulate the flow of fluids (liquids and gases) and their interaction with solid surfaces. Applications range from the design of computer cooling systems to automobile bodies to boat hulls to aircraft wings.

What the Mesh?

One of the things we’re going to need if we intend to perform a CFD simulation is one or more meshes. The mesh breaks down the product and its environment into millions of small pieces. This involves representing 2D surfaces as collections of triangles and quadrilaterals and/or 3D volumes as collections of tetrahedrons, quadrilateral pyramids, triangular prisms, and hexahedrons as seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Meshing – Common Cell shapes

Note that the “2D” qualification may be a bit confusing in this context. Take a hydrofoil “flying” through water, for example. If the speed is low enough that the water doesn’t distort the shape of the hydrofoil, then this can be modeled by “wrapping” a 2D mesh over the 3D hydrofoil. On the other hand, if the speed is such that the pressure of the water distorts the physical shape of the hydrofoil, then this affects the flow of the water, which means the hydrofoil will have to be modeled as a 3D volumetric mesh. In both cases, the flowing water is modeled as a 3D volumetric mesh.

In the case of a solid or a surface, a meshing tool accepts a 3D CAD model as input and generates corresponding 2D and/or 3D meshes as required. This is much harder than you might suppose because the quality of the mesh directly affects memory utilization along with the speed and accuracy of the results from the multiphysics simulation. Apart from anything else, there’s the sheer size and complexity involved (meshes can contain hundreds of millions or billions of cells), and while it’s relatively easy to create “any old mesh,” generating the most appropriate mesh for the task at hand is much harder.

So, What’s with NUMECA and Pointwise?

If you look at Cadence’s corporate story, you will see themes like “system innovation” and “Intelligent Systems Design” and the fact that “Cadence is a computational software company.” You will also note that none of these high-level themes specifically say “electronics” or “EDA.” Although the majority of our business has indeed been in the EDA sector, we have our eyes on the future—which includes growing the scope of the systems, our tools and technologies are capable of designing, analyzing, and optimizing.

Today’s automobiles, planes, boats, and submarines are essentially rolling, flying, and swimming computers. These mega-systems, which have traditionally been thought of as predominantly mechanical, are currently experiencing an electromechanical convergence that is no longer optional in product design, and Cadence is best suited to maintain and utilize design information from the chip to the highest level system.

Figure 2: Aerodynamic studies of an aircraft wing using NUMECA.

All of NUMECA’s amazing technologies are being ported to the Cadence Omnis CFD platform, an end-to-end CFD platform that gathers the capabilities of all the earlier disparate products and presents these capabilities as features that can be activated as required. CFD simulations such as the one presented in Figure 2, will now be performed on Cadence Omnis CFD platform. Cadence has a huge amount of expertise in scalability, with multiphysics simulations scaling from the workstation to the cloud, and all of this expertise is being applied to the development of the Omnis platform. Some multiphysics simulation vendors provide one or more standalone tools that must be run in isolation. Some allow their tools to be daisy-chained together, with the output of one tool feeding the input of the next. The Omnis platform takes things to the next level, providing a single interface that allows users to perform all the tasks they require. To put this another way, the CAD-centric Omnis CFD platform places the CAD model at the center with all of the physics added around it, thereby providing a better, more intuitive, and more continuous user experience.

Using the Omnis platform, analysts can mesh their CAD models and solve them. It can also refine and optimize the meshes based on simulation results in the platform. Cadence is already a leader in the electronics design space. Now, we’re bringing our brand, expertise, and investment to new spaces with a technological champion. With the Omnis platform, Cadence is going to transform the CFD workflow and make this improved user experience available to the mainstream market.

In contrast to the Omnis platform, which combines meshing, solving, and post-processing, the Pointwise tool creates CFD meshes that are optimized for over 40 CFD solvers. But the capabilities are complementary. The Pointwise tool will continue to be the optimal solution for analysts requiring full control of their mesh within a custom CFD workflow. However, we will also strengthen the connection to our world-class Omnis platform with the Pointwise tool. This is good news for those users who are happy with their existing Pointwise meshing solution and can benefit from robust data transfer to high-fidelity CFD solvers.

The Future Is Now!

In summary, the acquisitions of NUMECA International and Pointwise Inc. are a one-two punch that builds on our existing innovative multiphysics products, which include the Clarity 3D Solver for EM simulation, the Clarity 3D Transient Solver for finite difference time domain (FDTD) system-level EM simulation and the Celsius Thermal Solver for electrothermal co-simulation.

Cadence didn’t acquire NUMECA to only design boats, and we didn’t acquire Pointwise to only design planes. Our next-generation Omnis CFD platform will allow designers and analysts to address any CFD application, from the blood in our veins to industrial robots to the aerodynamics of a car to the hydrodynamics of a submarine. Whatever designers are working on, we want to help.

Users of legacy vendors in the multiphysics simulation space are thinking, “Will the next release gets me what I need?” Meanwhile, the users of Cadence CFD tools are thinking, “How do I put the pedal to the metal and redefine what I can now achieve with Cadence multiphysics simulation technologies?”

With Cadence’s acquisitions of NUMECA and Pointwise, the future of CFD is now!

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