My IC design career started just a few years before PADS got started in 1985 with a DOS-based tool for PCB design. A lot has changed since then, as PADS was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 2001, and continued to grow under Siemens EDA, now with four versions to choose from, where the top version is called PADS Professional Premium:
I can remember back in the 1980s how Apollo workstations were quite popular, because they accelerated the graphics display time for EDA tools much better than competitive hardware. Fast forward to 2022 and we have the same promise of speeding up EDA tools like PCB layout editing by using a GPU. At the 58th DAC there was a session called,… Read More
The last session I attended at DesignCon 2020 wasn’t a session at all. Rather it was an interactive discussion with Todd Westerhoff, product manager for electronic board systems at Mentor Graphics. Todd made some observations about the way high-performance PCBs are designed today and perhaps the way they should be designed. … Read More
The need for full wave EM solvers has been creeping into digital design for some time. Higher operating frequencies – like those found in 112G links, lower noise margins – caused by multi level signaling such as in PAM-4, and increasing design complexity – as seen in RDL structures, interposers, advanced connector… Read More
This week Cadence introduced Legato™ Reliability Solution, intended to address increased challenges in designing high-reliability analog and mixed-signal ICs for automotive, industrial, aerospace and defense applications.… Read More
Chip designers are familiar with the additional physical design checking requirements that were incorporated into flows at advanced process nodes. With the introduction of optical correction and inverse lithography technology applied during mask data generation, and with the extension of a 193nm exposure source to finer… Read More
Consumer electronics demand aggressive mechanical enclosure design — product volume, weight, shape, and connector access are all critical design optimization criteria. Mechanical CAD (MCAD) software platforms are used by product engineers to develop the enclosure definition — the integration of the PCB design… Read More
The diamond jewelry industry encourages customers to focus on the 4C’s — cut, clarity, color, and carats. At the recent PCB Forum conducted by Mentor (a Siemens business) in Santa Clara, I learned that current system design flows also require an emphasis on the 4C’s — collaboration, concurrency, consistency… Read More
My vacation is your worst nightmare. Well, at least that is what the bumper sticker says – it’s referring to Burning Man. It’s well known that among the tens of thousands of people attending this arts festival in Nevada at the end of each Summer there are lots of high tech luminaries. I also have gone many times – not to say that I am a luminary.… Read More
The EDA tool offerings for printed circuit board design commonly address one of three customer markets: (1) the enterprise design team, (2) the product development engineer, and (3) the “maker”. … Read More
