Suite is upgraded for high-speed design

Zuken has announced the launch date of revision 9.0 of CR-5000, its scalable and robust PCB and advanced packaging design suite.

Zuken has announced the launch date of revision 9.0 of CR-5000, its scalable and robust PCB and advanced packaging design suite.

This includes the latest version of the integrated high-speed design and analysis environment, CR-5000 Lightning.

The launch will be at Z-DAC 06, the European Annual Customer to Customer Technology conference from 24th to 26th October 2006 in Ulm, Germany.

Driven by increasing speed and complexity of PCB design, Zuken has focused on enabling faster and easier adoption of high-speed technologies.

This, combined with cross-tool integration and ease-of-use, yields tangible quality and schedule improvements in PCB design cycles.

Advances in the core CR-5000 environment, which includes system to board level design, analysis and verification, are in line with Zuken's ongoing mission of achieving the ultimate in cross-tool integration that will allow designs to be verified at every stage on a single source basis.

The core CR-5000 tools also feature enhanced high-speed capability, with deeper harmonisation of constraints.

One example of this is the unification of topology constraints between CR-5000 Board Designer and CR-5000 Lightning, making design flows smoother and more transparent.

New functionality has been introduced for high-density FPGA design, handling of gigabit datarates, and managing differential signals.

New technologies can be implemented more rapidly, and there have been significant ease of use and productivity-enhancing improvements.

Via modelling within CR-5000 Lightning now features the option of "complex" modelling, including resistance, capacitance and inductance, with both automatic extraction from PCB layout and pre-layout what-if analysis.

This level of accuracy is required with subnanosecond rise times common in FPGA and memory circuits.

In a related improvement N-port models mean that elements such as lowpass filters, can be easily defined within the Simulation Library Manager in the same way as other components.

Simulation kits will be made available for separate download, including a new kit for the Altera's high-end Stratix II FPGA family.

Kits include simulation models, ready-made topology templates, stimuli and what-if scenarios, designed and documented to correspond to application notes and standards, giving engineers a flying start in their high-speed design work.

Users can also create their own simulation kits to reflect company standards, eliminating the need for separate documentation.

Following the launch of Trunking in June 2005, CR-5000 Lightning 9.0 includes further advances in auto-interactive routing techniques.

More intelligence has been added for Trunk routing of buses and differential pairs, including multi-layer editing functionality with action preview, obstacle avoidance with reroute and advanced via pattern support, enabling bus and differential pair routing to be completed as easily as single trace routing.

These developments further enhance and simplify routing of FPGAs and fine line or micro-BGAs.

As bit rates increase, the need for accurate simulation becomes more critical.

CR-5000 Lightning 9.0 includes the ability to export S-parameters representing net topology behaviour and to export H-Spice net lists.

Further accuracy and usability improvements in this area include the ability to skip a specified number of leading bits in eye diagram generation.

Increasing harmonisation of the CR-5000 design environment to reduce cost of product design and thus to enhance productivity and quality, continues to be at the top of the agenda for the future, as does the ability to adopt new technologies and manufacturing processes as easily as possible.

CR-5000 9.0 will be available from late Autumn 2006.

CR-5000 Lightning starts at $19,800 and Eur 19,500, this includes node locked CR-5000 Lightning SI licence with a Prolog Link (an addon option that provides direct access to SI simulation/verification from CR-5000 System Designer).

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