Implementation of a new ferroelectric capacitance model from Ramtron International Corporation into SmartSpice was first described in the April 2002 issue of Silvaco Simulation Standard. This model utilizes a new concept of double distribution of domain reversal voltages. The temperature effects were not detailed in the previous article. This application note discusses the implementation of the temperature effects and updates the device syntax.

Silvaco SmartSpice simulation results are typically stored in RAM. Since transient simulations of large circuits often exceed 1GB, a large swap-space partition is required prior to simulation. Constant disk access may dramatically decrease simulation speed, therefore shifting some or all of the load to the system’s memory helps to alleviate this problem.

Level=36 RPI poly-Si TFT and other original TFT models do not support automatic geometry binning. The enhanced model included with SmartSpice 1.9.7.C or later now supports the selecting of a suitable model with both LMIN/LMAX and WMIN/WMAX, as well as with other MOSFET models.

Modern complex circuit designs require automatic router functionality in circuit layout editors. In multi-layer hierarchical design, it is often necessary to build a single wire between two objects or arbitrary points. It is unpractical to call a heavyweight router that is hardly aware of the design settings and technology parameters. Expert’s built-in Wiring Tool helps to bypass these time consuming operations, since all necessary information for routing is made available during Expert session.

After I create my round curve and run a DRC check on my design, it comes up with hundreds of errors associated with curves. For example, I have the layer named Isolation in the shape of a rectangle with rounded corners; the curves have been designed such that the outer and inner curves are concentric. The DRC then needs to check that the width of the feature is not less than 10um all the way around (shown in Figure 1). After the DRC script is run, it finds errors around the curves as the curves are approximated with straight lines (shown Figure 2). How can I solve this problem?