How BSXE Leverages and Extends Board Station

There is no better way to add productivity and new technology to your Board Station Flow than by deploying Board Station XE (BSXE). And you don’t have to give up your current flow to do it! That’s because the flows co-exist. Here’s how the new flow relates to the Board Station Classic and RE flows.

Board Station Classic and RE Flows

In the lower part of the illustration you see a high-level depiction of the classic Board Station (and Board Station RE) flow.

• A single library and front-end toolset supports these flows.
• Librarian (not shown) & Design Architect are used to create and edit libraries.
• LMS (not shown) is used to manage these libraries.
• In 2001, we added ‘Board Station RE’ which gave customers access to some of Mentor’s industry-leading AutoActive™ layout technologies.

The drawback of the RE option is that you have to pass designs back to Board Station Layout to do some of the layout before heading to FabLink for manufacturing prep. To eliminate this extra step, we chose to move forward with the Board Station XE Flow.

Board Station XE Flow

By pumping new technology into the Board Station XE Flow (shown in the top part of the illustration), we can simplify the Board Station flow and cut customers’ design time, while retaining your company’s legacy design data and investments in Board Station libraries and tools.

• The BSXE Flow uses the same libraries and library development tools as the Classic/RE Board Station flow.
• The BSXE design flow consists of Design Architect or Board Architect for schematic capture – exactly the same as in the Classic/RE design flows.
• To increase design-flow productivity and eliminate the data incompatibility, translation issues, and confusion that can occur with BSRE, we created the AutoActive-based Board Station XE layout environment.
• AutoActive combines ease-of-use with advanced functionality in a single, integrated, place-and-route editing environment, with correct-by construction methodology, and integrated, industry-leading, high-speed design capabilities.

Co-existence of Board Station Flows

Because of the way we’ve designed BSXE, customers get access to both the Classic design flow and the new Board Station XE-based design flow.

• The same library and front-end tools support both flows.
• The differences are in the back end, where we’ve added dramatic productivity-enhancing tools and technologies to get your products to market faster.
• BSXE has the capability to import older Board Station designs, so you can use legacy designs as a starting point for your new designs.

So, the Board Station XE flow supports three modes of operation:

1. Maintenance of the classic BS or RE flow
2. Creation of new designs in the BSXE flow
3. The importing of legacy designs from BS Layout into BSXE for modification and the addition of new technology.

By deploying the new BSXE flow, you can adopt new technology while continuing to use the traditional BS flow for legacy designs – all at your own pace and at minimum risk and cost.