New router fires up PCB design suite

Innoveda has enhanced its PowerPCB tool suite with a complete high-speed routing solution.

Innoveda has enhanced its PowerPCB tool suite with a complete high-speed routing solution designed to help users automatically or interactively manage and meet the thousands of signal constraints they encounter during the PCB layout process.

PowerPCB Version 5.0 includes new BlaseRouter 5.0 and BlaseRouter HSD (high-speed design) options, which help prevent signal integrity problems and speed time to market.

The new version also includes a new fast interactive route editor, FIRE, unmatched in capability for interactive routing of high-speed signals.

In addition, PowerPCB now has a new toolkit for advanced packaging.

The routing enhancements are based on the next-generation Latium architecture, for maximum speed.

Innoveda will demonstrate the new version of PowerPCB this week at DATE 2002 in Paris and from 20th to 22nd March 2002 at the PCB Design Conference West, in Santa Clara, California.

According to Chris Crowley, EnSigna Lab application engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, "High-speed design tools are critical to our operations, and we have extensive experience using PowerPCB, BlaseRouter and other Innoveda design tools.

From a high-speed standpoint, the new version of BlaseRouter stands out as very powerful, customisable and extremely easy to use.

We can set high-speed constraints using PowerPCB, and easily manage and route them in considerably less time using the new BlaseRouter.

We consider the new PowerPCB high-speed routing solution, with BlaseRouter features such as length-controlled routing, as valuable for routing and verifying our designs".

"Our customers who deal with highly complex designs, with hundreds or even thousands of high-speed constraints, face constant pressure to design faster", said Joe Dalton, vice president, chief marketing officer at Innoveda.

"Previously, managing and meeting these constraints and component densities during PCB layout meant time-consuming, error-prone manual routing and checking.

With this new release of PowerPCB, board designers can choose to route signals automatically or interactively to meet their high-speed design constraints, and verify that they have been met.

With these new capabilities, our customers are able to achieve their design goals significantly faster and more accurately, and improve the quality of their designs".

PowerPCB Version 5.0 can significantly reduce the time and effort involved in successful high-speed routing.

PowerPCB Version 5.0 with BlaseRouter 5.0 and BlaseRouter HSD automatically routes geometric high-speed constraints including minimum and maximum length, matched lengths, and differential pairs.

With the addition of component entry rules, routing to and from components with fine pitches can be achieved easily.

New utilities verify that all design constraints, including high speed, are met.

Innoveda's FIRE, a shape-based, gridless interactive route editor, offers unparalleled push, shove and plowing features, multiple unique design rule check (DRC) modes, and new trace editing features.

Industry-leading capabilities include interactive differential pair routing, automatic and semi-automatic addition of accordion trace patterns, and several graphical tools to help users complete and manage their high-speed designs.

PowerPCB Version 5.0 configurations are scheduled to be available in late spring.

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