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Design and Development Software
News Release from: Cadence Design Systems | Subject: PCB design environment
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 March 2002
Big changes to PCB design environment
The latest release of Cadence's PCB design environment features advances planned to increase productivity and optimise the quality and performance of electronic products.
The latest release of Cadence's PCB design environment features advances planned to increase productivity and optimise the quality and performance of electronic products The release includes enhancements to both its Studio and Expert series flows including technological advances in SpecctraQuest Signal Integrity Expert, Allegro layout and Specctra autorouter
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 21 Oct 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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With the new release engineers now have a single environment for the exploration, verification, and measurement of differential signalling for die-to-die interconnect across integrated circuit (IC) packages and PCB.
Other advances include new interactive routing capabilities, new recursive autorouting algorithms for improved manufacturability, and a capability that can shorten time-to-volume for IC manufacturers through the creation of silicon implementation high-speed design kits.
The new differential signalling design capability is introduced to provide engineers with a method of providing signal integrity in high-speed designs and increasing productivity.
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This is particularly relevant in the networking and communications markets where the use of differential signalling is pervasive and time-to-market short.
The new capability represents the first complete exploration, simulation, and post-layout verification environment for differential signals available in the market today.
"Differential technology offers many advantages in the design of digital products that require fast communication between chip, package, and board.
Reduced noise, faster circuit speed, and reduced power consumption are among them", said Jamie Metcalfe, vice president of strategic marketing for the Cadence PCB Systems Division.
"To effectively realise these designs, engineers need to be able to simulate differential signals as an entity - in both pre- and post-layout situations".
At its simplest, differential signalling is a method of sending the same piece of information both noninverted and inverted from a (differential) driver over two traces to a (differential) receiver.
Differential signals allow for lower voltage swings resulting in faster circuits, reduced power consumption and EMI.
These benefits are realised by design complexities and challenges that include: the assignment, grounding and powering of IC pins; exploring implementation parameters and routing traces accordingly in a tandem fashion; and matching layer assignments and locations of vias.
Differential designs are developed and validated by simulation.
The new Cadence differential signalling technology is incorporated in the company's SpecctraQuest design and analysis solution.
It allows users to simulate differential signals as a unit in pre- and post-layout simulations, improving both design quality and productivity.
"With the new differential signalling extraction and simulation capability in SpecctraQuest, we were able to shorten the time to design and implement differential signals on the PCB", said Tom Hilger, principal signal integrity engineer for Plexus Corp.
"We used the capability on production boards while participating in a Cadence early adopter program and were able to reduce design time -- very important in the networking and data communications industries where time-to-market is critical".
With the new ability to see differential signals as an entity, sweep simulation allows users to explore both design parameters such as differential impedance and differential propagation delay, as well as physical implementation constraints such as trace width and gap, 'out of phase' tolerance, and length or trace coupling tolerances.
Custom stimulus and custom measurement capabilities for differential signals allow users to make complex measurements such as common mode offset or source-synchronous timing measurements from die pads inside the IC package.
A user can now understand the influence of the package on the performance of the differential signal.
The ability to extract differential signals from layout design for post-layout verifications and debugging purposes eliminates a number of time-consuming tasks.
By using the Cadence Advanced Package Designer database, users can simulate and verify differential signals from die-to-die through the PCB.
In the new release, SpecctraQuest provides the ability to create high-speed design kits that contain encrypted HSpice models.
Until now, engineers have had to translate HSpice models to PCB (IBIS) models in a time-consuming process that creates accuracy and validation issues.
Direct use of silicon-level HSpice models within SpecctraQuest enables the concurrent design of ICs and PCBs and allows design kits to be created 20 times faster than before.
This also provides a solution for engineers to perform PCB simulation with the new breed of complex models that cannot be represented in IBIS-style formats.
IC manufacturers will be able to provide high-speed design kits to systems companies concurrently with their own design process, encouraging faster new silicon adoption cycles.
System companies will be able to start the simulation of new complex, high-speed devices faster, bringing products to market faster.
The new PCB release enables increased engineering productivity through Allegro layout enhancements, including Quickplace - a fast, interactive pre-floorplanning environment that allows for the rapid visualisation, selection and implementation of parts based on designer-selectable criteria.
"The new Allegro interactive editing capability allows us to shove traces and vias out of the way quickly and easily undo the changes", said Bart Welling, director of electronic design services, Tektronix.
"We realised a significant productivity improvement in interactive routing on the first production boards created with the new Cadence release.
This software release has been solid and a real time saver, critical on the high speed boards we design".
The enhanced IntelliUse etch editing environment can boost designer productivity as much as 10 times by allowing designers to easily create interconnects on very dense, high-speed designs by using a routing engine with real-time push/shove and contour-following of interconnect and vias.
This improvement is targeted to designers working with dense, highly constrained boards who need to minimise etch layers and maximise route density - all while obeying a complex set of physical and electrical constraints.
Specctra router improvements include new recursive mitre algorithms that produce tightly packed interconnects with results that rival hand-routed design in both appearance and manufacturability.
The new release will be available in the second quarter of 2002.
It is supported on Solaris, HP-UX, IBM-AIX platforms, and Windows NT and 2000.
PCB Design Studio starts at a US list price of $4000.
for a one-year license and includes: Concept HDL schematic or Capture CIS schematic, library management, Allegro for interactive layout, and Specctra autorouter.
The PCB Design Expert for high-speed design starts at a US list price of $26,000.
for a one-year license and includes Concept HDL Expert or Capture CIS schematic, constraint and topology management, library management, Allegro Expert for interactive PCB layout, and Specctra Expert autorouter.
SpecctraQuest Signal Integrity Expert starts at a US list price of $24,200, for a one-year license.
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