Instead of competition and dirty dealings, recent cutbacks and smaller staffs have often led to cooperative partnerships between different companies. By sharing, co-developing, and integrating their products, companies are spawning innovations that may fuel future engineering development. For example, Agilent Technologies, Inc. (www.agilent.com) and Computer Simulation Technology (www.cst.com) recently announced an alliance to bring three-dimensional electromagnetic (EM) technology to a wider range of RF and microwave design engineers.

Essentially, this alliance will expand the integration of both companies' software: Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS) electronic-design-automation (EDA) software and CST's MICROWAVE STUDIO (CST MWS) software. The integrated 3D EM capabilities should help to simplify the design flow. They also will speed the characterization and analysis of new high-frequency wireless and wireline communications designs.

For Agilent's ADS design flow in particular, this partnership is expected to further improve the ability of engineers to simulate 3D EM applications. Thanks to the CST MWS time- and frequency-domain 3D EM modeling engines, customers can tackle a broad range of 3D applications. In addition, CST MWS offers an open application-programming interface (API). This API simplifies the process of embedding CST MWS into a design flow.

Note that the time-domain engine is well suited for broadband applications, such as signal integrity and package modeling. For narrowband resonant structures, however, the frequency-domain solver vows to provide an accurate and fast alternative.