Productivity boost for EDA prototyping tool

Hot-Stage 4.1 is an upgraded version of the engineering prototyping tool from Zuken that delivers a seamless front-to-back design flow.

Hot-Stage 4.1 is an upgraded version of the engineering prototyping tool from Zuken that delivers a seamless front-to-back design flow.

With over 75 improvements to the earlier release, Hot-Stage 4.1 offers designers greater ease of use, enhanced accuracy and improved performance.

New functionality includes automatic component model assignment with fast overrides, easier definition of stimuli for simulation, additional measurement facilities, automatic copper pour, and on-screen red-lining capability.

Additional verification and engineering-oriented variants further expand the product's capabilities.

Engineers designing high-speed electronic products need to be able to investigate and define constraints early and then maintain them throughout the process.

Hot-Stage 4.1 enables this while assisting layout engineers to meet critical electrical and mechanical constraints and quickly verifying that the final design works as specified.

Hot-Stage 4.1 moves beyond constraints and verification to significantly reduce design time.

The standard Hot-Stage simulation library contains over 5000 models that are automatically assigned to components when a design is loaded.

With Hot-Stage 4.1 it's now much easier to use these models by assigning technology defaults at the design, part or component levels, or by defining specific overrides on a case-by-case basis.

This means that it is much faster to set up a design and that designs can always be simulated.

In addition, Ibis, Spice or custom models can be easily imported using a graphical interface, ensuring models are always available.

Significant enhancements to the user interface deliver improved productivity, through improved interactive performance, easier colour setup, additional viewing controls and user definable key definitions with links to the scripting interface.

It's now much easier to define stimuli to drive the simulator from the Constraint Manager spreadsheet interface.

The stimuli definitions are then saved and re-used, thus avoiding repetitive work.

Enhanced measurement capabilities within the interactive simulator enable rapid design analysis, through improved parameter sweep capabilities, point-to-point measurements, fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) for voltage, current and impedance, and improved display controls.

Design time is further reduced by additional routing capabilities such as automated copper-pour for partial power and ground planes, and Activ-45 routing, which delivers unprecedented user control whilst still obeying high-speed constraints.

Finally, engineering change orders can now be communicated more effectively using on-screen markups and annotation (red-lining), delivering paperless communication to the whole development team Zuken Product Manager, Neil Bufton commented: "The new functionality in Hot-Stage 4.1 makes virtual prototyping and 'what if' analysis much easier for engineers to set up and use.

The time saved is then available to further optimise the design and to get products to market faster.

Hot-Stage gives designers up-front visibility of the whole electrical and physical design.

Without it, they experience more design iterations, higher costs and extended development times".

Hot-Stage 4.1 is available now and costs from US $6750 per seat.

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