Fluent Releases Icemax v2.2

Fluent Inc., have released version 2.2 of its Icemax software, the world's fastest circuit extraction tool for analyzing advanced IC package designs. The new version of the Icemax solver comes with 64-bit OS support, practically eliminating the limit on the complexity of electrical models that can be generated. As the packaging industry gets ready to meet the challenges of next-generation packaging technologies, including System-in-Package (SiP), Package-in-Package (PiP), Package-on-Package (PoP) etc., the 64-bit version of Icemax will prove to be an invaluable addition in design flows. Customers will no longer be restricted by the memory limitations intrinsic to 32-bit operating systems.

"Icemax is already well-known in the semiconductor industry worldwide for its speed, ease-of-use and seamless ability to import package layouts in standard industry formats," says Rajesh Nair, Product Manager, Fluent's Ice Division, "With Icemax 2.2, our customers will experience computational performance that Fluent is recognized for and is unmatched in the industry today. Computations that take days in other tools can now be completed in a few hours. To meet the stringent product development cycles in today's IC packaging industry, Icemax continues to be the only viable solution."

Icemax 2.2 also comes with several industry-leading breakthrough improvements in the following areas:

Advanced geometry cleanup schemes, to minimize the number of facets describing the design, ultimately leading to smaller model sizes.
A new and improved "hybrid" mesh (consisting of triangles and quadrilaterals) that gives a much smaller cell count than traditional triangular meshing schemes employed in other electrical modeling tools.

Optimized integration schemes, to generate accurate solutions without excessive mesh refinement.

"Halo-based" proximity detection algorithm for capacitance parameter extraction, eliminating unnecessary geometric features from the capacitance model.

Multi-CPU support for RLC computations, allowing solution times to scale based on the number of CPU's.

All of these enhancements allow accurate solutions to be generated faster and with far less memory requirements than earlier releases of Icemax.

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