ICX® Signal Integrity Design Kit

Mentor Graphics Announces Support for Intel's IBIS 4.1 AMS Signal Integrity Models

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• Download the Mentor portion of the Intel/Mentor ICH8 Design Kit
• To request the Intel portion of the design kit, please contact your local representative

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The design kit does not require any licenses in addition to the licenses required by ICX.

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Mentor Graphics, the market and technology leader in printed circuit board (PCB) design solutions, today announced the release of the ICX® Signal Integrity Design Kit for Intel's next generation I/O controller hub.  This kit is the first to utilize Intel's new IBIS 4.1 and IEEE 1076.1 standard VHDL-AMS (http://www.eigroup.org/ibis/) models.  These analog/mixed-signal (AMS) models have been developed by Intel for the I/O controller hub portion of their next generation chipset, codenamed "Broadwater." These AMS signal integrity (SI) models also provide significant speed and accuracy benefits over traditional SPICE and IBIS modeling techniques.  And, being wrapped in IBIS syntax, these new models are as easy to import and use as traditional IBIS models.

"Mentor Graphics is pleased to support these new IBIS 4.1 AMS models from Intel," said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager, Systems Design Division, Mentor Graphics. "We are committed to open industry standards, such as IBIS 4.1 and IEEE 1076.1 VHDL-AMS, and believe that they provide the flexibility and standardization required to cover modeling requirements now and into the future."

Traditional IBIS constructs cannot accurately model today's advanced I/O buffers.  As a result, many designers and engineers of PCBs performing SI analysis are forced to use complex transistor-level SPICE models. These models run slowly, often suffer convergence problems, and are typically distributed in a proprietary format. On the other hand, the IBIS 4.1 AMS models offer the benefit of superior performance and improved accuracy, with no convergence issues, in an IEEE standard format.

"Intel is pleased to support the new IBIS 4.1 standard for signal integrity modeling by providing IBIS 4.1 AMS models," stated Greg Crain, application engineering director of Intel's Business Client Group.  "We are confident our customers will find the increased speed, accuracy, and flexibility of the IBIS 4.1 AMS models to be a significant benefit in their high-speed PCB design process."

The Mentor ICX kit for Intel's next generation I/O controller hub includes a complete IBIS model for the I/O controller hub, including AMS models for the PCI Express, Serial ATA and USB2 interfaces, as well as IBIS-formatted S-parameter models for the package pins and connectors, and traditional IBIS models for the other lower-speed interfaces.  The kit also includes a custom menu for configuring device and test conditions, and a complete reference design layout for Intel's next generation chipset imported into the tool ready for SI analysis. The next generation I/O controller hub high-speed receiver models also include a novel application of AMS which measures and plots eye-opening values in real-time while the simulation is in progress.