CST - Computer Simulation Technology previewed the upcoming release of CST STUDIO SUITE™ version 2008, including the industry standard 3D EM Time Domain tool, CST MICROWAVE STUDIO®, in booth #735 at MTT-S IMS 2007.


Design engineers will experience a multitude of enhancements when switching to version 2008 of CST STUDIO SUITE. Time saving additions and features will be particularly welcomed and include: project management facilities, structural parts’ availability via copy/paste or sub-model imports and automatic software updates.

Two new interfaces have been introduced which can streamline the design workflow, particularly for engineers involved in Signal Integrity. The first of these is a new native interface to Mentor Graphics Expedition™, which conveniently uses COM/DCOM to exchange data of entire layouts, areas or nets.

The second, an ODB++ interface, enables the access to layouts from a large variety of tools such as Mentor Graphics Board Station® and Zuken CR5000. To round off the interoperability improvements, users of CST MICROWAVE STUDIO (CST MWS) can now utilize Sigrity current distributions as field sources, and export HSPICE models.

Performance optimization has been a key concern for this release. Users will benefit from the improved parallelization of transient and frequency domain solvers, and ongoing code optimization projects with Intel ensure that the latest and upcoming generation of processors and technologies are exploited to the full.

Furthermore, dedicated hardware acceleration boards are now available for the transient solver. The direct frequency domain solver on tetrahedral grids has also been focused on, and has experienced vast improvements in memory usage and speed.

“We believe that CST MICROWAVE STUDIO 2008 will mark a key breakthrough in simulation technology. It promises significant simulation performance augmentation and will re-define the standards for workflow integration” said Martin Timm, product marketing manager, CST. “An unrivalled time domain solver, a cutting-edge frequency domain solver and an even more powerful CAD interface combine to increase the design throughput of Microwave, RF, SI and EMC Engineers.”