computer specifications for cadence applications

I am interested in this as well for many of the same reasons. I have a colleague in grad school who is looking to replace his aging Sun Blade 2000 with something more powerful. As in jimito13's case this is a single user machine, not part of a cluster or farm of computers, used for analog/rf schematic and extracted simulations using Cadence IC, MMSIM, ASSURA, and EXT, as well as other EDA CAD tools. Because of changes in support agreements with Oracle/Sun, the department is phasing out Sparc-based machines in favour of the x86 platform. 

Sorry jimito13 I'm not trying to hijack your thread but I think we're both looking for the same thing.

 Of course tkhan,no problem!As more people asking for the same thing,more possibilities for a detailed answer ;-)

How big is the circuit inventory? Have you tried the APS mode? Are you using the absolute latest MMSIM version - each MMSIM version (and even hotfixes of each) have had quite a lot of advances in simulation speed optimisation - so I'd first of all start by ensuring you're using the latest MMSIM10.1 hotfix version, and using APS. 

If the circuit is sufficiently large - 8 or 16 CPUs will help even more.

This is a bit of a difficult question to answer though - because it's definitely circuit dependent (especially the size of the circuit)

Regards,

Andrew.

From the spectre output log at the start-up of the post-layout simulation :

Circuit inventory:
              nodes 118780
                bjt 106  
              bsim4 2822 
          bsource_1 54   
          capacitor 43384
               cccs 1    
              diode 251  
           inductor 33   
            isource 1    
    mutual_inductor 32   
              nport 1    
               port 2    
           resistor 191798
       sddiode_cur2 1    
        transformer 6    
          vardgncap 1    
               vcvs 2    
          vpnp_cur1 1    
          vpnp_cur2 1    
            vsource 13    

I am interested in for even bigger circuit post-layout simulations.

The MMSIM version i use is : 7.2HF307 and from terminal with spectre -W command i get : sub-version  7.2.0.109.Unfortunately i have not access to the latest version yet...

What about memory specifications?

I have noticed the APS mode but i do not know what it is...could you please give me some first tips (e.g. a manual or a reference to study) and then i will search in-depth by myself?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Jimito13

I'd have to follow up with my colleague but for now let's assume his design is roughly the size of jimito13's, although I don't think its actually that big. I don't recall what the subversions are but I know he's using IC614, MMSIM72, ASSURA41, EXT91. We lag a bit behind because of our foundry PDK's supported versions, however I did encourage keeping both the foundry supported version and the latest version to make things easier when working with both the foundry and Cadence support engineers. I don't know if anything has been done to tweak the simulator settings, all I've been told is that it's 'slow'. I am waiting to get details on the circuit being simulated, the types and duration of simulations, etc., but I think the solution for jimito13 would be good in my colleague's case as well (even if it's beyond what he needs, optimizing cost is not a big deal for a single machine in his case).

BTW you can learn more about APS here: http://www.cadence.com/Community/blogs/cic/archive/2009/02/18/video-demo-spice-2-0-the-abcs-of-aps.aspx

 Thanks for the link!Helpful for an initial contact with APS,i will search further now.