PCB White Papers
RF and Microwave: Design Challenges in PCBs
As consumer electronics manufacturers drive more and more functionality into their products, PCB designers face new challenges. This paper examines one of those challenges - the incorporation of RF and microwave devices into a PCB.
More White Papers
BGA Breakouts and Routing
This book presents a number of studies and solutions for addressing these challenges.
Very large BGAs, over 1500 pins, present a unique challenge for routing on a printed circuit board. Often just routing out of the BGA is the primary contributor to the number of layers required for routing.
Designing RF, Analog and Digital on PCB
Mixed RF, analog and digital technology boards are becoming commonplace in many industries including wireless telecom, consumer, automotive, mil-aero and even medical. As well, the complexity of these boards are increasing in the face of stiff competition. This paper discusses the challenges and recently developed design techniques which enable electronics companies to meet aggressive time-to-market goals, lower their development and production costs, and produce more competitive products.
Logical and Physical Design Reuse
Today's designs have become extremely complex and intricate, creating a need for software tools that support automation, maintain accuracy, and meet short design cycles.
Re-using previously designed circuitry has long been an option for resolving these challenges, but never one that was easy to implement. Software providers have made attempts at providing this capability, but they haven't always caught on. With new, more efficient options at hand, will customers see the value? Will they give it a try? Read about a methodology that can handle today's data-filled design content and still produce proper, reusable designs.
Topology Planning and Routing - Combining the Expertise of the Designer with Auto-routing Speed
The routing of bus structures on a PCB has always required a manual process to achieve the maximum densities and esthetic look. Also, the communication of the ideal bus topologies (form, layers, nets) has always been done by paper. Mentor Graphics has developed revolutionary technology that enables bus structure topologies to be planned as an automated part of the design process, captured in the design database and then carried on to the physical design process where an auto-router can efficiently route the buses. The result is a process that combines the expertise of an experienced designer with the speed of auto-routing resulting in significant productivity and design cycle time improvements.
Rethinking Reuse
The promises of board-level design reuse have gone largely unfulfilled. While often cited as the optimal way to address shorter design cycles, implementing an effective design reuse strategy has eluded many design teams. However, there are many aspects to design reuse that can be put into practice to reap significant gains in design time and quality. This article describes several approaches to design reuse, from creating simple variants to reusing entire physical implementations.
Topology Planning and Routing
Learn about the disconnect between the digital design engineer's vision of bus structures on the PCBs and the failure tools to capture and route this vision in an efficient manner.
Distributed Autorouting Using XtremeAR
Learn about XtremeAR process flow for faster autorouting of PCBs by connecting multiple workstations working together, real-time, on the same design. This process can be used as the ultimate team design environment. Faster results can lead design teams to try different routing options to find the optimum route strategy. This paper covers system setup, the required environmental variables and the necessary licenses to start the XtremeAR session. It also describes the strategies for session controls through the XtremeAR client Manager, XtremeAR recording/playback & the performance analysis for XtremeAR session.