High-speed PCB designs are complex, often requiring a team with design engineers, PCB designers and SI/PI engineers working together to produce a reliable product, delivered on time and within budget. Cadence has been offering PCB tools for many years, and they recently wrote a 10-page white paper on this topic, so I’ll share … Read More
A “PCB thermal analysis” design activity has traditionally involved the PCB designer transferring a finished design to a dedicated thermal analysis tool. While this has indeed successfully contributed to numerous PCB thermal signoffs in the past, there are inefficiencies that can be mitigated with the use of Cadence’s Allegro… Read More
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
Electronic systems design is filled with a wide range of tools used across IC packaging design, multi-board systems, design creation, physical implementation, electro-mechanical co-design, simulation & analysis, and new product introduction. Siemens has been offering tools in this flow for many years now, so I was able… Read More
PCB and package designers need to be concerned with Signal Integrity (SI) issues to deliver electronic systems that work reliably in the field. EDA vendors like Siemens have helped engineers with SI analysis using a simulator called HyperLynx, dating all the way back to 1992. Siemens even wrote a 56-page e-book recently, Signal… Read More
Signal Integrity (SI) and Power Integrity (PI) issues are critical to analyze, ensuring the proper operation of PCB systems and IC packages, yet the computational demands from EDA tools can cause engineers to only analyze what they deem are critical signals, instead of the entire system. Cadence has managed to overcome this SI/PI… 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
From Zion Research I learned that the flexible electronics market was about $13.2B in 2021 and growing at a CAGR of 21%, so that was impressive. There are several factors that make rigid-flex circuit so attractive, like: space efficiency, reduced weight, enhanced reliability, improved signal integrity, streamlined assembly,… Read More
PCB designers can perform pre-route simulations, follow layout and routing rules, hope for the best from their prototype fab, and yet design errors cause respins which delays the project schedule. Just because post-route analysis is time consuming doesn’t mean that it should be avoided. Serial links are found in many PCB designs,… Read More
I knew that HDMI was a popular standard used to connect consumer products like a monitor to a laptop, but most professional video and broadcast systems use the SDI (Serial Digital Interface) connector standard. Pleora Technologies, founded in 2000, currently serves the machine vision and manufacturing markets, including those… Read More
