With the increasing complexity and diversity of the mechanical constraints and electrical requirements in electronic product development, printed circuit board designers are faced with a number of difficult challenges:
I first met John Durbetaki at Intel in Aloha, Oregon and we both had a keen interest in the nascent personal computer industry. My first PC was made by Radio Shack and dubbed the TRS-80 which maxed out at 48KB of RAM. I kept watch on Durbetaki as he left Intel and formed his own company OrCAD in 1985 to serve the needs of PC-based CAD software.… Read More
In last 30+ years, the electronic design industry has seen rapid changes more than any other industry. The change has taken place in the whole electronic ecosystem including semiconductor technology, transistor design, IC / SoC design, PCB, and system design. Today, a PCB can be very complex connecting several heterogeneous… Read More
It was back in July of 2012 that the acquisition of Sigrity by Cadence was announced. Although Cadence is a dominant player in both IC and board layout tools, they did not have an electromagnetic (EM) signal integrity solution in their portfolio. This acquisition marks a turning point for the EM/SI sector – tight integration… Read More
The power integrity (PI) of a system is an extremely important aspect to be looked at all levels – chip, package and PCB for overall reliability of the system. At the PCB level, a DC analysis, usually based on IR drop, must ensure that adequate DC voltage, satisfying all constraints of current density and temperature, is delivered… Read More
When Cadence acquired Sigrity in 2012, two motives were involved: get more competitive in state of the art signal integrity analysis, and grab a foothold into the other vendor’s PCB flows in an area that is developing as a real sore spot for digital designers.
Just as the days where PCB tape-out meant actually using tape are over, … Read More
In July Cadence acquired Sigrity, one of the leaders in PCB and IC packaging analysis. Until a decade ago, signal integrity and power analysis was something that only IC designers needed to worry about. For all except the highest performance boards, relatively simple tools were sufficient. Provided you hooked up the pins on all… Read More
