Coventor, Inc., a supplier of end-to-end MEMS development tools, announced ARCHITECT, a MEMS top-down behavioral system simulator that integrates mixed-domain thermal-electromechanics with optics, fluidics, and electromagnetics. ARCHITECT allows designers to capture and understand complete device and sub-system behavior required to successfully develop optical and wireless MEMS products. ARCHITECT can be used alone or in conjunction with the rest of the CoventorWare suite of MEMS design tools.
ARCHITECT employs a top-down design methodology, familiar to the integrated circuit industry, in an approach Coventor terms "structured custom design." At the heart of this technique is a robust set of parameterized, physically correct, behavioral libraries, which can be customized and assembled for a variety of MEMS applications. In addition, ARCHITECT includes a graphical schematic capture editor, circuit simulator, timing/waveform analyzer, and proprietary layout generators that create 2D layout descriptions from schematics.
The compelling benefit of the new paradigm is twofold. Designers can now capture complete device and sub-system behavior across the many different physics domains required for optical and wireless MEMS. Plus, accurate and comprehensive simulations take only minutes versus days, enabling rapid exploration of wide-ranging design spaces. Designers can also perform six-degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) simulations, versus 1 DOF simulations offered by other vendors. Library parameters, such as geometry and process information, can be customized quickly and user-defined library elements can be created efficiently. Additionally, users have the option to export final top-level behavioral MEMS simulation results from ARCHITECT for further verification using Coventor's established finite element tools.
ARCHITECT is part of a general release of CoventorWare, a modular design environment that supports both top-down and bottom-up design. CoventorWare also includes three other software bundles: DESIGNER for creating MEMS GDSII device layouts and 3-D solid models, ANALYZER for performing complex multi-domain physics analysis, and SYSTEM BUILDER for extracting customer-specific behavioral models from finite element results. CoventorWare is suitable for designing optical, RF, fluidic, and generic MEMS and microstructures. A version of ARCHITECT targeting microfluidics design is also available. ARCHITECT is priced in the U.S. starting at $75,000.
About Coventor:
Coventor, Inc. is a provider of software, product development services and intellectual property platforms for the development of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and microfluidics-enabled communications and biotechnology products.