DesignConis next week in Santa Clara, so today I spoke with Mark Ravenstahlfrom ANSYS to get an idea of what to expect at the conference and trade show.
Bio
Mr. Ravenstahl joined Ansoft, now ANSYS Inc., in 1993 as a sales manager for the electromechanical simulation products. Currently, he is the Director of Product Marketing for the Electronic Business Unit involved in product strategy, partnerships and marketing. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh.
Questions and Answers
Q: What are you showing new at DesignCon this year?
A: On the applications side, three things:a. System wide Power Delivery
b. High speed signal analysis
c. Thermal analysis for 3D stacked die
Q: What type of engineer would benefit from seeing ANSYS at DesignCon?
A: Engineers designing IC, electronic packages and PCB individually and engineering teams dealing with the integration of Chip, package and PCB as one system.
Engineers focusing on thermal and structural integrity of packages and boards.
Q: What are the challenges that ANSYS will help me with?
A: There are five areas we offer analysis tools for:a. Signal Integrity
b. Power integrity
c. EMI
d. cooling strategies
e. mechanical integrity
Q: What is the approach of ANSYS on signal and power integrity?
A: ANSYS approach to signal integrity, power integrity and EMI problems of high-speed interconnects is to provide industry standard electromagnetic solvers (HFSS, Sentinel and SIwave) to accurately and efficiently perform electromagnetic extraction from within the ANSYS layout environment or directly from our ECAD partner’s layout tools.
Q: What is the learning curve for me with ANSYS tools?
A: As with all high-end analysis tools there is a learning curve. Depending on the engineer’s background it could formidable. The largest impediment to using electromagnetic extraction tools for electrical engineers has always been unfamiliarity of 3D modeling paradigms. Using technology such as HFSS for ECAD we provide access to our EM solvers directly from a layout environment. This technology has made EM extraction much easier for our users. In addition, ANSYS automatic adaptive meshing algorithms completely eliminate the need to build and refine a finite element mesh. Dealing with meshing issues has been another impediment to engineers using EM extraction tools early in the design process. Finally, ANSYS automatic output of parasitics to widely used circuit analysis tools such as ANSYS Designer and Synopsys HSPICE allows user to perform accurate circuit analysis including electromagnetic effects thus providing tremendous insight to signal and power integrity issues and EMI.
Q: Is there an online community for Apache/ANSYS users?
A: Yes, for the Apache CPS on-line community visitwww.apache-da.com
On the ANSYS Electromagnetics side visit us on Linkedin
Q: When you’re not at work, what are your hobbies?
A: Coaching Little League baseball, golf and real estate investment
Comments
There are no comments yet.
You must register or log in to view/post comments.