Semiconductors, digital twins, and materials see improvements.
Ansys 2022 R2 Moves Forward on Several Fronts
When a simulation company as large as Ansys releases a new version of its software, there are usually enough enhancements and feature additions to make every engineer happy. The 2022 R2 release from the simulation solution provider is no exception, with changes to several product lines and the addition of some new features to enhance workflow.
The overall objective of simulation isn’t going to change anytime soon. Engineers want to be able to confirm their designs with a high degree of fidelity and to do so as quickly as possible. Conventional simulation wisdom has long been that the more we understand about our designs early in the development process, the better our overall engineering experience will be. The 2022 R2 release works toward that goal of upstream engineering with big enhancements to semiconductor design, sustainability and digital twins.
Two Tools for Semiconductors
To understand the context of the new semiconductor tools, it helps to know Ansys Seascape. Seascape is a “purpose-built big data platform that delivers elastic compute functionality and distributed file/data service.” Machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly viable in the simulation realm, but analyzing a higher number of possibilities requires more computing power. Using Seascape allows customers to spread the compute load on big simulation problems across several computers. Someone once described this load-sharing concept to me as “bit-torrenting for simulation engineers” and that image has stuck with me over the years.
Ansys Totem-SC, the first of the new semiconductor tools, works at the transistor level to build simulations where digital and analog requirements must exist in mixed-signal harmony. The tool uses electromagnetic and infrared (IR) drop analysis to help engineers find issues early in the design process—before layout-vs-schematic verification occurs. Power grid parameters and bump placement can be decided early on in the process, instead of after additional design decisions have been made. The reliability portion of Totem-SC runs signoff checks on wire coupling, finFET heating and joule heating of components before checking the effect on their interfacing systems.
Like Totem, Pathfinder has been around for a while, but Pathfinder-SC is an upgrade for semiconductors. Pathfinder is a tool that studies electrostatic discharge (ESD) on system-on-a-chip (SoC) and IP designs, and the SC version of the tool extends these capabilities. The software uses both human-body and charged-system model events to test the effects of ESD on the chip design. Pathfinder-SC checks clamps and bumps and their connections to power and ground to minimize the possibility of ESD damage. The tool is built for semiconductors of any size and leverages the power of Seascape to test chips with millions of instances.
Digital Twins Are Useful Across the Landscape of Simulation
Digital twins are boosted in a few different ways with this new release. For instance, Ansys Maxwell, the company’s tool for electromagnetic field simulation, has a new workflow that is specifically for magnetic latching couplings within Ansys Motion. For me, however, the big winners in the pool of Maxwell users are the drive system engineers. Maxwell can now take reduced-order models (ROMs) and use them in Ansys Twin Builder to analyze drive systems over time. This should enable engineers to pull absolute and relative error numbers from the digital twin while building the chip and its interfaces.
A new toy is added to Twin Builder through the release of Toshiba’s Accu-ROM toolkit. Accu-ROM is built for electric power steering design and development. Power steering is a mix of mechanical and electrical components, and this new toolkit will help engineers to understand the effects of mechanical stresses and reactions on electrical steering components. As with some of the other changes in this release, this toolkit previously existed as a Toshiba product and is now offered as a plug-in for Twin Builder.
Materials and Sustainability Gain Big Functions
Ansys is very strategic when it comes to acquiring companies, with these companies generally performing a function or operating in a sector where Ansys has room to grow. The early 2019 acquisition of Granta Design, which pulled in a great suite of material and sustainability tools, is a great example of this acquisition model. Ansys Granta was launched in the 2022 R1 release and gets a new handful of upgrades here in the second half of 2022.
Materials are an incredibly important part of the enterprise, and Ansys says that materials are typically the number two expense for manufacturers. Granta acts almost as a separate entity from the simulation portions of Ansys and more like a product lifecycle management (PLM) data portal that helps a company understand the impact of material choices across the entire organization. Materials Data for Simulation (MDS) is the entry-level option for customers using the Granta functions in addition to regular Ansys products, and other options include a material selector and an enterprise-wide material information system.
Granta can now transfer its material property data to any of the main Ansys solvers, and a new Material Calibration app is available for Ansys Mechanical users. Having material data, and then generating more experimental material data, is a huge boost for engineers working at the mechanical, electrical or system levels. As sustainability becomes a bigger concern for every manufacturer and the supply chain issues from the last few years show no sign of slowing, understanding your materials is becoming increasingly important. Having a catalog of materials on hand is critical to understanding the effects of different alloys or chemical additives. And in a supply chain crunch, the ability to run an accurate and fast simulation for a substitute material will mitigate costs and risk.
What Releases Now Instead of Later, and What’s Next?
Ansys is a leader among simulation companies, and this means that its releases will continue to roll out a few times a year. Each new release will contain a mix of quick fixes that customers have requested as quality-of-life improvements and feature additions. Engineers can be impatient, and that’s a good trait when we are collectively innovating new products and processes. Any user intimately familiar with a software will find the most efficient ways to use that software but probably has a few ideas about potential improvements. Ansys has shown a commitment to engaging with its users and making quality-of-life changes when needed.
Ansys continues to bring new companies and tools under its umbrella. Its acquisition of companies adds another level of complexity to its release schedule. Adding to the complexity of these release issues what the future holds. Renewable energy, autonomous vehicles, robotics and electronics are all advancing quickly. Ansys is working to update its software a few times a year to meet customer concerns and integrate its acquisitions, but users who are five and 10 years in the future also come into play. New technologies will require the same simulation tools that we require today, but the need will probably require even faster results with an even higher level of confidence.
