About EMX®

EMX is an electromagnetic simulator for high-frequency, RF, and mixed-signal integrated circuits. Our unique emphasis is on complete automation coupled with uncompromised speed and accuracy. EMX has been benchmarked by our customers to be more than an order of magnitude faster than the leading finite-element and boundary element tools in the industry. EMX is built on a philosophy of maximal automation, with industry-standard input and output formats, full scriptability from the command line, and automated handling of modern IC layout features.

EMX is a planar 3D, integral equation solver that uses a very accurate representation of Maxwell's equations. It features:

• 3D conductors and vias
• true volumetric currents to accurately account for skin effect
• accurate sidewall capacitances
• layered and lossy substrate effects
• substrate and inter-component coupling.

EMX is particularly easy to use even for complicated geometries in modern IC processes. It supports

• automated handling of mask-ready layout, with no need for hand editing
• automatic merging techniques for via arrays
• context-dependent vias
• slotting rules
• metal and dummy fill
• boolean operations for layer generation
• width and spacing dependent metal bias
• scaling operations to port technologies to half-nodes

EMX is very efficient because of advanced numerics, such as:

• Multipole-accelerated far-field interactions for fast matrix construction
• advanced meshing and compression techniques to reduce matrix memory requirements
• iterative solvers and robust preconditioning for quick matrix solution
• a well-conditioned matrix formulation, even at low frequencies
• automated reduced-order modeling for fast frequency sweeps

EMX is used by foundries and semiconductor design houses for tasks such as:

• characterization of passive component libraries
• design of spiral inductors, MOM capacitors, MIM capacitors, baluns and transformers.
• design of RF test structures
• modeling large distributed power transistors
• simulation of high-Q passive-in-package filters
• extraction of complete RF circuits

EMX is fully integrated into Cadence Virtuoso:

• Interface for both Cadnce 5.1 and Cadence 6.1
• Pcells for inductors, transformers, stacked inductors, pcells, tcoils
• Cadence Design kit support for various foundries such at TSMC, IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and UMC
• Convenient "minimalist" interface to Cadence

Examples using EMX

Brochures and papers

EMX Brochure
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EMX Foundry support
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Modeling of Integrated RF Passive Devices (at CICC 2010)
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Including Pattern-Dependent Effects in Electromagnetic Simulations of On-Chip Passive Components, RFIC '09 (joint paper withTSMC)
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Synthesis of Optimal On-Chip Baluns, CICC '07 (joint paper with UMC)
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De-Embedding Considerations for High Q RFIC Inductors, RFIC '07 (joint paper with RFMD)
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DAC '04 Presentation, "Large Scale Full-Wave Simulation"
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CICC '07 paper, "Synthesis of Optimal On-Chip Baluns"
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RFIC '07 paper, "De-Embedding Considerations for High Q RFIC Inductors"
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