Cadence revolutionizes productivity for next-gen PCB design

Cadence Design Systems has announced new product and technology enhancements within the Cadence Allegro system interconnect design platform for printed-circuit board (PCB) design. The enhanced platform, which includes Global Route Environment technology, establishes a unique paradigm for PCB designers, offering significant new capabilities for constraint-driven design, as well as new technology and enhancements to improve usability, productivity and collaboration among design teams in the IC, package, and board domains.

"As supply voltages go down and current needs increase, package and IC characteristics must be considered while designing Power Delivery Networks on PCB systems," said Xiangzhong Jiang, SI manager at Huawei Technologies. "With the enhancements in Allegro PCB PI technology, we are able to plug in package models, on-die current profile, and die capacitance—improving our accuracy without sacrificing simulation performance."

Today, engineering teams face unprecedented challenges in designing and managing the overall system interconnects of today's complex electronic designs. As the average PCB size decreases, the number of device pin counts, the frequencies of designs, and the complexity of design constraints increase. This ongoing challenge is making traditional approaches to PCB design obsolete. Building on Cadence PCB market segment leadership, the new Allegro platform offers a new paradigm in PCB design by offering a flow and methodology that adapts to and overcomes these increasing complexities.

"The new Allegro platform release introduces many new productivity features that will prove advantageous for designers like me," said Vincent Di Lello, senior PCB designer, Kaleidescape Canada, Inc. "Features like physical and spacing constraints, noun-verb function selection mode, expanded RMB functions, open GL, and numerous visual enhancements will greatly increase a designer's output and provide a much more user-friendly design environment."

The Cadence Allegro platform is the leading physical and electrical constraint-driven PCB layout and interconnect design system. It has been updated to include the most advanced routing technology and a new methodology for physical and spacing constraints using the Cadence Constraint Management System, a common cockpit which provides constraint management throughout the entire PCB flow. Other updates include support for algorithmic modeling for advanced serial-link design, improved circuit simulation, seamless scalability with Cadence OrCAD® products, enhanced collaboration, and a new user-interface for improved productivity and usability. This release of the Allegro platform also offers significant new functionality for signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI).

"Being our most significant PCB release in many years, we have worked with many customers to meet their requirements so they can solve their most challenging design problems," said Charlie Giorgetti, corporate vice president, product marketing at Cadence. "Our ability to develop and deliver innovation for our customers clearly is a visible commitment to the PCB market segment."

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