I’ve known about DRC (Design Rule Checking) for IC design, and the same approach can also be applied to PCB design. The continuous evolution of electronics has led to increasingly intricate PCB designs that require Electrical Rule Checking (ERC) to ensure that performance goals are met. This complexity poses several challenges… Read More
The development of electric vehicles (EVs) is key to transitioning to sustainable transportation. However, designing high-performance EVs presents significant challenges, particularly in power module design. Power modules, including inverters, bulky DC capacitors, power management ICs (PMICs), and battery packs, … Read More
As electric vehicles (EVs) gain widespread adoption, safety, reliability, and efficiency are becoming increasingly important. A crucial component in ensuring these aspects is the power module (PM), which manages the energy flow between the EV battery and the motor. The design of these power modules must not only meet the high-performance… Read More
PCB designers have been using manual routing for decades now, so when is it time to consider adding interactive routing technologies to become more productive? Manually routing traces to connect components will take time from a skilled team member and involves human judgement that will introduce errors. When a design change … Read More
At the risk of highlighting my abundant lack of expertise in the domain, I had always viewed EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) compliance and testing as one of those back-end exercises that can only be done on the real device and depends on a combination of expertise and brute-force in chip/package/module/system design (decaps,… Read More
Simulation is a broad technique spanning certainly digital logic and circuit simulation but also methods beyond these which are particularly relevant to ADAS design. In fact, much of the design of full ADAS systems begins and ends with these types of modeling. This is in part due to the need fully validate integrity and reliability… Read More
The prevailing industry trends are clear: (1) PCB and die package designs are becoming more complex, across both mobile and high-performance applications; (2) communication interface performance between chips (and their related protocols) is increasingly demanding to verify; (3) signal integrity and power integrity issues… Read More
While there’s a lot of cool technology in modern semiconductors, it’s important to raise our sights periodically to understand how well these chips will work in the systems for which they are designed. One area driving a lot of semiconductor growth is automobile electronics. We’ve had drive-train control forever it seems, but… Read More
Often we hear about isolated instances of excellence from various companies in the semiconductor industry which contribute significantly in building the overall ecosystem. While the individual excellence is essential, it’s rather more important how that excellence is utilized in a larger way by the industry to create a ‘value… Read More
Today an SoC cannot be without multiple IP blocks integrated together in the most optimal manner. In such an environment, it’s natural that interoperability and configurability of an IP get prime considerations to achieve the best PPA (Power, Performance and Area) for the SoC containing that IP. While PPA is a basic criterion … Read More
