Genesis vs. Microwave Office

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biff44

Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Posts: 1835
Helped: 244
Location: New England, USA

15 May 2008 16:50 microwave office price

If you had to choose between either Agilent Genesis or AWR Microwave Office, which would it be. Ease of use, correlation between simulations and real test data, and suite cost are my biggest issues.

Need a linear and nonlinear simulator, Emag simulator, and layout package.

webdog

Joined: 13 Nov 2001
Posts: 118
Helped: 11

15 May 2008 22:09 agilent genesis

Both packages has it's strenghts and weakness... you have to make priorities and then look at what cost.

I suggest you do apply for a free trial and try them out for your selfe!

Having said that, my gut feeling is that MWO is really more into RFIC design and Genesys is more for discrete components.

I find Genesys 2008.1 a pleasure to use, but I mainy use it for linear simulations. Using Genesys for the past 15 years I never felt I had to switch Smile

/WD

madengr

Joined: 06 Apr 2005
Posts: 394
Helped: 84
Location: Kansas City

15 May 2008 22:12 buy microwave office

You'll probably get many answers but I prefer MWO. Over the past 15 years I have used Genesis (Eagleware), ADS, Ansoft Designer, and MWO.

I use MWO (actually Analog Office and VSS) at work and also traded in my personal license of Genesys for MWO. Both will give you good results if you give it good input, but the layout in MWO is hands down better since it can handle PCB up to RFICs.

The nice thing is that you can get the base model for linear and layout. Then tack on HB, 2.5D EM (closed and soon open boundry), MMIC PDKs, iNets, HSPICE, and Si RFIC extraction and PDKs.

With Genesys you will stop at MMICs and then have to use ADS.

Of course the VSS system simulator is nice too.

You can download an eval copy of MWO and put it through it's paces.

Sounds like you want the MWO-225 package which does what you request.

Quote:

Having said that, my gut feeling is that MWO is really more into RFIC design and Genesys is more for discrete components.

Nope, it handles boards and discretes just fine, and it's not over-kill for such. That's what it did initially, and they have expanded over the years. I do mostly PCB level with it but am translating a fully integrated Frac-N synthesizer (Peregrine SOI) into it so we can prove it out and ditch Cadence.

vfone

Joined: 10 Oct 2001
Posts: 2328
Helped: 327

16 May 2008 13:52 genesys 2009+ microwave+homepage

I was a big fan of Genesys but unfortunately now MWO surpass it.
At the moment the only part of Genesys that I am using is the Filter design and analysis, which still is strong, user friendly and using a smart optimization.
Beware that for the options that you are looking for, MWO could cost you approximately 80.000 bucks plus taxes, when Genesys is cheaper.

madengr

Joined: 06 Apr 2005
Posts: 394
Helped: 84
Location: Kansas City

16 May 2008 14:07 agilent genesys

Have you tried the NuHertz for MWO? It works pretty well. I have not used it for any distributed filters yet, but have done some diplexers and anti-aliasing filters with it.

http://www.nuhertz.com/

I have also found Testwave to be invaluable for documentation.

http://web.awrcorp.com/content/Downloads/TestWave-2007-Datasheet.pdf

citizen

Joined: 14 May 2008
Posts: 111
Helped: 4

17 May 2008 7:03 microwave office vs ads

hi vfone
you told that youare a big fan of genesis, hope i can clear my doubt with you.
i used genesis for my filter design but when i try the same layout in ads it is not giving theresult as a filter at all i sthere any problem in this ?

thank you

biff44

Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Posts: 1835
Helped: 244
Location: New England, USA

17 May 2008 13:39 price microwave office

I thought MWO was only around $25K. I have asked for a download of MWO. I attended a 1 day seminar on genesis recently, and about all I can say is that is has gotten significantly more complicated over the years! It will probably come down to which package I can buy more cheaply!

Lance_RFdude.com

Joined: 01 Mar 2007
Posts: 65
Helped: 10
Location: Rochester, NY

18 May 2008 1:34 genesys vs ads

I use Genesys pretty much exclusively for linear, planar EM (momentum) and nonlinear analysis... and the other things it can do.

I have no real complaints -- I agree, it is not the suite that is most suited for RFIC design, but it serves my needs well.

Adding momentum really gave it a kick which I'm using a lot these days.

Try them both and see what you think works best for you.

Lance

DDavid

Joined: 06 Apr 2006
Posts: 232
Helped: 22

18 May 2008 13:54 why do we prefer awr microwave office to ads

Hi,

In what freq do u work
Genesys is easy and correct no more than a few GHz after that......... bad!

AWR no bad performance, but comparison's vs Genesys much hard interface!

David

Lance_RFdude.com

Joined: 01 Mar 2007
Posts: 65
Helped: 10
Location: Rochester, NY

18 May 2008 14:36 ads vs genesys

DDavid wrote:

Hi,

In what freq do u work
Genesys is easy and correct no more than a few GHz after that......... bad!

AWR no bad performance, but comparison's vs Genesys much hard interface!

David

David,

Please be specific about your accuracy claims.

I've used genesys for design and analysis of many things at X-band and above -- mixers, amplifiers, antennas. Specifically I've analyzed some filters up to 35 GHz and seen good agreement with other tools such as HFSS.

I've heard this sort of negativity before but I've failed to see any meat behind it. So what specific problems did you have?

Honestly, I think most circuit/board level simulators at the core are quite capable; the differentiators are the user interfaces, scripting, ease-of-use, interfacing with other tools, and things of that nature. Here it comes down to preferences. Other differentiators are the HB and EM portions of the tool of course.

Thanks,

Lance

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18 May 2008 14:36 Ads

DDavid

Joined: 06 Apr 2006
Posts: 232
Helped: 22

18 May 2008 16:47 agilent genesys 2009

Hi,

First of all I start with Genesys ones of the advantages of this simulator that it's have very simple interface!
I am will give a few examples why not using Genesys (of course only if u have other option):
1) in currently job i work in Xband (up to 6GHz) my friend make simulation (linear and EM) for small signal the results are very close, but when i simulated the same schematic vs ADS only schematic simulation I got exactly results like we produce the board!!!

2) I am prefer ADS because in Genesys I am hate to deal vs port/grids problems during EM simulation.

3) Mixer (from system lib) can't work properly with HB analysis.
this is just a few problems... I work vs Genesys a few years and yes I believe his is nice, but not more!!!

In other hand again Genesys have nice Sysntesis to start with! Some times help to save time!

About AWR last time I work vs this simulation was during my study, truly I don't remember much, but from my friends i know that they are simulated vs AWR with very high freq.

All this only me opinion and maybe I am wrong, who nows?
Regards,
David
Very Happy

Lance_RFdude.com

Joined: 01 Mar 2007
Posts: 65
Helped: 10
Location: Rochester, NY

18 May 2008 18:51 ads vs awr

David,

A few comments below.

DDavid wrote:

But for the last year, Genesys has had Momentum available to it (and sonnet before that as well). EMPOWER, the original EM simulation tool within the Genesys suite, was a limitation. I have seen very good results with it *IF* I kept things nicely on a grid. Still, it was significantly slower than sonnet or momentum..

Momentum makes this "problem" go away.

3) Mixer (from system lib) can't work properly with HB analysis.
this is just a few problems... I work vs Genesys a few years and yes I believe his is nice, but not more!!!

** I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying that you want a general purpose mixer model that will work in a HB simulation? I'm not sure this is still a limitation. You could always write a verilog A model for one and use that in Genesys. I've designed a number of mixers in genesys with good results. mostly I find the models (from the vendors) being the limitation since they are typically characterized for linear/amplifier/low noise applications (for FETs). Again, I'm not sure what you're specifically referring to here. Probably you're talking about a spectrasys model?

In other hand again Genesys have nice Sysntesis to start with! Some times help to save time!

About AWR last time I work vs this simulation was during my study, truly I don't remember much, but from my friends i know that they are simulated vs AWR with very high freq.

** I'm sure AWR is a perfectly good tool; again, I think at the core most of these simulators are very capable of most everything that anyone wants to do. I do like to address any misunderstandings that I hear about though because I think one needs to present some real data on the relative agreement of circuits. I presented a webcast in January (sponsored by agilent (no, I didn't get paid a dime from agilent to do this)) -- and presented a few cases of measured vs. modeled circuits for up to 6 GHz (this was mainly due to the limitation in my network analyzer at the time; which now is no longer a limit). In any case, you can see some good and some bad cases of agreeement (bad cases = transistor model limitation in this case) --- but since I have so much good success with Genesys I just want to provide some balance to the discussion.

In the future I'll hopefully have time to publish more positive results....

All this only me opinion and maybe I am wrong, who nows?

*** I wouldn't say you're wrong, but again the issue is really about presenting some data to support the point. the agreement probably was poor in the case you explain. There was a competition a few years back in microwave engineering europe, on the topic of a mmWave mixer. the Eagleware result actually won the competition. Really could have been any of the entrants, but they won. These are just a couple of single data points -- so maybe one of these days there should be another "throwdown" (for those fans of the food network) where we try a few circuits in different simulators...

thanks for your answer,
Lance

Regards,
David
Very Happy

vfone

Joined: 10 Oct 2001
Posts: 2328
Helped: 327

18 May 2008 22:07 mwo verses

Who cares about ADS performances when the original post was about Genesys and MWO?

For the options that you specified, MWO price is in the range that I’ve mentioned above.
That is the total price including all the maintenance or other fees that AWR charge you per year.

DDavid

Joined: 06 Apr 2006
Posts: 232
Helped: 22

19 May 2008 7:46 microwave office scripting

Hi,

Biff if u intend to use under 6GHz my advice take Genesys: because it much more chipper (I know that u can buy all the package in Genesys in about 25k$), and easy to use.

Good luck,
David

Manjunatha_hv

Joined: 03 Aug 2005
Posts: 716
Helped: 105
Location: INDIA

19 May 2008 10:38 prix de microwave office

Hello Biff,

These all are my personal comments...
AWR Microwave Office has Circuit Annotations & 3D layout view of 2D drawingswhich helps in trouble shooting multilayer boards...
Apart from that it has good Transmissionline models & third party EM solvers such as CST MWS integration which are not available in Genesys...

I have attached a nice Benchmark doc ument which available on intyernet & also it is very old one...The latest AWR Microwave Office has very
nique features for Hybrid/PCB & MIC designers such as INets (Intelligent nets) & Automatic Circuit Extraction (ACE) which you may not find in even Agilent ADS...

Also as madengr said their is no RFIC/MMIC foundry PDK support for Genesys...
That shows some accuracy issues for high frequency circuit analysis...

---manju---

Sorry, but you need login in to view this attachment

biff44

Joined: 24 Dec 2004
Posts: 1835
Helped: 244
Location: New England, USA

20 May 2008 1:38 ads genesys

Well, I have a 30 day eval copy of MWO running. Anyone have a good file they could download for me to try simulating?

vfone

Joined: 10 Oct 2001
Posts: 2328
Helped: 327

20 May 2008 7:46 genesis from agilent

http://www.edaboard.com/ftopic240777.html

touze

Joined: 23 Jun 2003
Posts: 2

04 Jun 2009 6:35 genesis microwavew office

When you consider a full Genesys for $25k with all synthesis, EM and its nice spectrasys and whatIF system design tool, it sure beats paying $80k for MWO. If you are not doing IC, go for Genesys anytime. You are saving > $50k , enough to buy 2 more copies>:idea:[/tex]

freqzt

Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 123
Helped: 2

04 Jun 2009 13:38 genesys user group new england

touze wrote:

[/tex]

Is it true? The price of MWO is 3 times than genesys!!!

Joel-Tang

Joined: 21 May 2009
Posts: 22
Helped: 1

04 Jun 2009 14:07 microwave office vs ads

Yes, it is true. Genesis is the way to go if money is a concern. I've used and loved MWO in the past, but now I'm forced to use Genesys. Most of my applications are below 1GHz so I rarely need to simulate transmission lines since they have much less effect on my performance so I cannot compare performance since my MWO usage was in the 800MHz to 2.5GHz range.
Agilent has been doing some interesting things with the Genesis package. After a rough start in 2005, their latest version is very nice.

nassim1

Joined: 02 Jun 2008
Posts: 139
Helped: 4

04 Jun 2009 14:22 advantagesgenesis microwave office

For me i prefer MWO than Genesy since in my knowlege is MWO is more compete as ADS software but Genesy is limited where you are obliged to use another software for simulation..

In reality, ADS is more convenient for diffrents designs

N

Lance_RFdude.com

Joined: 01 Mar 2007
Posts: 65
Helped: 10
Location: Rochester, NY

04 Jun 2009 14:26 genesis aligent

Joel-Tang wrote:

I have no experience with with MWO; I had used EESOF series IV back in the day and briefly used ADS. I've been using Genesys for almost 10 years.

Other than designing IC's -- I don't really see how Genesys is going to hold you back. I regularly design linear/nonlinear/passive circuits from 2 MHz to >10 GHz. Since I have prototyping and measurement capabilities here to 20 GHz, I have a pretty good handle on the "measured versus modeled" problem; and I've seen no inherent flaws in any Genesys analysis recently. A few years ago I pointed out a problem with their interdigital capacitor model and provided them data... and they worked on/fixed their model (this was maybe in 2002 or so?), and wrote it up as an appnote.

The place where I see things fall apart, almost universally, is with the vendor nonlinear models (I normally find them myself and enter them into the tool), not anything that is under the control of the CAE vendors.

I expect that at the core, all of the simulators are very similar in their accuracy and capabilities. Sure, some models will be better than others, some engines might be faster than others, but I expect they are all pretty "good". Then it comes down to which interface you prefer, whether you feel you are well supported, and what you can afford.

I happen to really like the Genesys interface and capabilities, and the Genesys users are seeing some nice synergy with Agilent (i.e. there is a sharing of technologies BOTH WAYS between Genesys and ADS). Genesys has certainly benefited from having Momentum and such.

Anyone going to MTT/IMS 2009 should stop by the agilent booth; we're having a Genesys user group meeting/lunch/presentation on Wednesday next week.

Disclosure:
I don't work for Agilent -- I do work with them for mutual promotion of Genesys and my consulting business.

-Lance

freqzt

Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 123
Helped: 2

04 Jun 2009 14:30 eagleware genesys 2003.1

As I know both genesys and ADS is from agilent. What is the difference between genesys and ADS? What is the advantage of MWO than genesys? Is it more accurate? More easy to use (user friendly)? Regardless the price.