Expedition Enterprise
Designing a product requires more than just a great PCB layout tool – you need a tightly integrated design system. Expedition Enterprise provides this high level of integration, enabling all team members to work collaboratively and more efficiently.
Hear David Weins and John Isaac from Mentor Graphics BSD discuss the business benefits of the Expedition flow.Expeditiontm Enterprise's Advanced Technology
- Meets the needs of mid-sized to large electronics companies with complex PCB designs
- Eliminates the burden of managing multiple tools, with its common database and user interface
- Supports globally dispersed design teams with real-time collaboration
- Maintains data integrity - from concept to manufacturing
- Reduces design cycle time and manufacturing costs, while increasing productivity
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Featured Expedition Enterprise Techpubs
How to Get Started in HDI with Microvias
Electronics continue to become denser, smaller and more complex. The drive to produce more hand-held applications is obvious, but "Mother Nature" is playing a big role in determining the other drivers. As chip signal rise-times continue to decrease (due to smaller gate geometries) the resulting signals are more susceptible to interconnect parasitics. Signal Integrity (SI) improves with miniaturization. All these smaller size factors are drivers for HDI with microvias.
Integrated Circuit increases in total gates has required more pins, as well as finer pin pitch. Over 2000 pins on a 1.0 mm pitch BGA is not unusual, as is 296 pins on a 0.65 mm pitch device. The faster rise-times, as well as the need for SI, require an increasing number of power and ground pins. Consequently, this drives the need for more layers in multilayers. Again, this drives the need for HDI with microvias.
This paper goes over the STEPS in deciding if you need HDI-microvias and how to START. Included is HDI Standards, design trade-offs, materials selection, fabricator selection and Benchmarking, test vehicles, HDI reliability, electrical performance, and CAD features for HDI.
I/O Designer -- Uniting Disparate HDL, FPGA and PCB Design Flows
Programmable logic devices have become increasingly attractive for new design starts, as complex devices incorporating embedded processors, memory blocks, and DSP functions are now replacing entire ASICs. Design starts using ASICs have plummeted from a high of over 11,000 in 1997 to below 4,000 in 2003 (Source: Gartner Dataquest). This is because FPGA architectures not only provide excellent reprogrammability, reduced risk and lower development cost benefits compared to ASICs, but also enable quicker design turnarounds with a sufficiently competitive edge in the market and minimal compromise in terms of performance.
The Basics of FPGA Design
Understanding device types and design flows is key to getting the most out of FPGAs. This article examines Do's and Don'ts for the FPGA designer, compares FPGA architectures, and considers the overall FPGA design flow. It also looks at the advantages and disadvantages of various FPGA technologies as well as the different types of FPGA usage.
The importance of considering the larger FPGA flow, in which the device is attached to a printed circuit board in a system, is also mentioned briefly. This larger, integrated flow becomes more critical as FPGA vendors continue to introduce more complex and powerful devices and as developers retarget designs to different technologies from different vendors.
News and Related Articles
- Mentor Graphics Collaborates with Lake Washington Technical College to Open PCB Design LaboratoryNov 12, 2008
- Mentor Graphics Publishes New Technology Book On BGA Routing by Charles Pfeil Jun 26, 2008
- Mentor Graphics and Agilent Technologies Announce Industry-First EDA Integrated Solution Expected to Cut RF-PCB Development Time in HalfApr 7, 2008