Design Automation


PCB design software gains voltage drop and cooling tools

15 June 2016 Design Automation

Mentor Graphics announced a comprehensive product-creation platform based on PADS PCB software that enables individual engineers and small teams to solve the engineering challenges involved in creating today’s electronic products. With increasing systems design complexity and the need for printed circuit board (PCB), mechanical and systems engineers to access easy-to-deploy tools, the PADS platform has been extended to enable engineers to develop PCB-based systems from concept through manufacturing hand-off.

The product creation process is much more than schematic capture and board layout. Engineers must address many other issues for a successful product design, including component selection, signal and power integrity, electronic cooling, form and fit, and design for manufacturability. With this release, the PADS platform extends its product creation solution by adding PADS HyperLynx DC Drop and PADS FloTHERM XT tools for high productivity at unprecedented price-performance.

By adding HyperLynx DC Drop analysis to the PADS platform, engineers can create electronic products ranging from low-power wearable devices to products that require high-power processors. The increasing number of power rails in modern devices can result in non-functional or hard-to-debug design if analysis isn’t used early in the design process.

The PADS HyperLynx DC Drop product quickly identifies problem areas in the design which would be difficult to find in the lab on a prototype. The tool quickly provides investigative solutions which the user can apply in an easy-to-use environment. Results can be validated in layout to ensure that appropriate guidelines were followed, thus reducing prototype spins.

With the DC Drop product, engineers can optimise the power distribution network (PDN) for efficient, clean, multi-voltage power to ICs; quickly analyse voltage drops caused by insufficient copper across power supply rails; and identify layout areas that contain excessive current density so they can be eliminated early.

Key benefits of PADS FloTHERM XT include:

• A CAD-centric solution for thermal simulation and electronic cooling.

• Consideration for all thermal aspects of the design, including package selection, PCB layout, board structure and enclosure design.

• Direct interfaces with all major MCAD vendors and all vendor-neutral file formats.

• Automatic report generation via HTML, PDF or Microsoft Word.



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