Software Enhancements Driven by Reference Accounts:

Tim Ghazaleh, director of marketing for Intusoft, commented that the company's reference accounts again brought forth a number of desired features for the software this year. Several product enhancements were installed across the "SpiceNet" design entry system, "IsSpice4" simulation output file, automated electrical measurements readout, and waveform viewing. Further, a unique Digital Data Viewer was added to ICAP/4's "IntuScope" waveform viewing and signal processing tool, designed to eliminate the cumbersome task of deciphering bus input signals with output values.

New Digital Data Viewer:

ICAP/4's Digital Data Viewer (DDV) is an innovation that charts data resulting from simulation of digital buses (e.g., bus feeding a 7-segment LED IC). The process requires initial set up of a data template that defines buses and their parameters, such as input data patterns at targeted schematic nodes, which are prescribed as binary or binary-coded decimal. Corresponding outputs are defined in decimal, hexadecimal, octal, binary, or mnemonic format. The output of a single analog node can be included as an analog value. The user also specifies what signal to synchronize the bus data to, such as either edge of a system clock. Bus high and low logic levels are computed by the simulator, or can be specified by the user. After simulation, the user can move IntuScope's waveform cursor along the clock signal, as corresponding text lines of bus data in the table are highlighted in DDV's viewer window. Also, any data line in the table can be selected, and IntuScope's cursor will jump to the corresponding clock transition time.

New ICAP/4 Features:

8.x.11 Build 2817 has enhanced SpiceNet's display of DC operating points, component properties, user-specified custom part bins, and waveform graphs displayed on the schematic. Following a simulation run, the display of automatically charted electrical measurements has also been enhanced. Management functions for Monte Carlo statistical analysis now run much faster. With component sweeps, multiple components can be assigned the same sweep variable and swept as a group through a prescribed range of values. Many designers are interested in key data collected from a SPICE simulation output file, so ICAP/4 has added operability enhancements for the IsSpice4 simulator's output file. Other features with Build 2817 include waveform management and importing of data in IntuScope more powerful.

Industry's Largest Device Model Library:

In the modeling domain, Intusoft's free custom-modeling program, which is open to the engineering community, added 40 new simulation models to ICAP/4's previous release of 444 new devices. These are full custom models developed by the company's in-house modeling team; the requested IC and discrete models are not furnished by vendors. This brings the total simulation library size to more than 23,500 device models - the largest offering in the industry. In December of 2005, a new saturable-core SPICE model was added to thousands of cores featured in ICAP/4's "Magnetics Designer" magnetic design and synthesis option.

ICAP/4 8.x.11 Build 2817 provides a New User's Guide that enables quick success in basic design entry, schematic operations, simulation setup and execution, cross-probing the schematic for waveform views, waveform processing and calculator operations, window configuration management, component sweeping and more, in less than an hour. An extensive collection of in-application help, movies, and manuals are also part of ICAP/4 Build 2817.

Product Backgrounder:

ICAP/4 8.x.11 Build 2817 is a fully integrated design simulation tool suite consisting of design entry and management tools, analog and mixed-signal circuit simulation, full-featured design debug and verification capability, fault synthesis, and automated export to Bartels AutoEngineer® PCB system. The scalable product line starts at $249 US, with all product offerings incorporating Intusoft's IsSpice4, 4th-generation SPICE technology. ICAP/4 is built on significantly enhanced SPICE 3F5 and XSPICE. Offerings feature a full scripting language to optionally modify or create new simulation and waveform-processing functions; schematic-less component variation as value, expression or function of another component's change; 30 power supply design templates, dedicated power-electronic library, dedicated RF model library, magnetic design and synthesis option, fully integrated waveform viewer and signal processor that includes random cross-probing to schematic, pole/zero and 2-port analyses, circuit optimization, Smith and Nyquist charts, automated assignment and charting of electrical measurements including out-of-limit alarms for any design node and component; extensive parts management system, IBIS2SPICE converter through version 3.2, fault injection with optional test diagnosis, and a fully configurable design and debug windows environment.

Company:

Established in 1985, Intusoft designs, develops and markets award-winning electronic design automation software to electronics industries worldwide. Its headquarters are in Gardena, California, including a worldwide network of resellers. Intusoft's products target a breadth of applications across all industrial, technological, military and consumer industries, by providing leading tools for analog and mixed-signal design of boards and ICs, plus automated test synthesis.

Information on Intusoft and its products is provided at www.intusoft.com.