PCB Technical - PCB Proofing Mixed Signal Design Solution

As design miniaturization has become fashionable, consumers need high-performance, low-cost products. In order to adapt to market competition,PCB manufacturers require R&D personnel to develop different types and different functional configurations of high-performance and low-cost products in the shortest possible time. Products, occupy the market. This brings many new design challenges to designers. For example: the use of digital-analog hybrid technology, or even radio frequency technology, on the same substrate to achieve the purpose of miniaturization and improving product functions. The mobile phone that has taken the world by storm is the most typical example. The industry also has corresponding solutions-design team, concurrent design, derivation and design reuse are the most typical strategies.

PCB proofing traditional serial design

That is, after the electronic engineer has completed all the front-end circuit design, it is transferred to the physical board-level designer to complete the back-end implementation. The design cycle is the sum of circuit design and board-level design time. After the novel parallel design has become the mainstream design idea and the hybrid technology is widely adopted, the serial design method is somewhat out of date. We must innovate from the design method, while using powerful EDA tools to assist designers in design, in order to meet the requirements of timely listing. As we all know, it is impossible for each of us to become an expert in all fields, nor is it possible to complete all the work best and fastest in a short period of time. The concept of the design team was put forward in this context and has been widely used. At present, many companies are adopting the method of design team to cooperate in product development. That is to say, according to the complexity of the design and the different functional modules, the entire design is divided into different functional BLOCK blocks, and different design developers carry out the logic circuit and PCB board design in parallel; then at the top level of the design, the final design results of each BLOCK block, Import in the way of "devices" and synthesize a whole board design. This method is called PCB design reuse. Through this method, it is not difficult to see that it can greatly shorten the design cycle, and the design time is only the sum of the design time of the most time-consuming BLOCK block and the time of the back-end interface connection processing.

PCB proofing tool standardization and third-party tool integration

At present, there are many manufacturers engaged in the development of electronic design automation (EDA) tools, such as Cadence, Synopsis, Mentor Graphics as the main EDA tool suppliers; in addition, there are many other EDA manufacturers. EDA covers a wide range of fields, including networks, communications, computers, aerospace, etc. Products involve system board design, system digital/IF analog/digital-analog hybrid/RF simulation design, system IC/ASIC/FPGA design/simulation/verification, software and hardware co-design, etc. It is difficult for any EDA supplier to provide the strongest design process that meets the different design needs of various users. From the perspective of market share, Cadence's strong product is IC board design and service, Synopsis's strong product is logic synthesis, and Mentor Graphics' strong product is PCB design and deep sub-micron IC design verification and testing. Undoubtedly, modern electronic design increasingly relies on EDA tools and technologies, while EDA manufacturers adopt product standardization methods to meet the needs of users. Many designers adopt the strong products of multiple companies in their design process to form The best design process. Various EDA manufacturers have improved the compatibility of their own strong products and the ability to integrate third-party products to adapt to the potential needs of users.

PCB Proofing Derivative Technology

Manufacturers focusing on civilian products often need to develop products with different functions and different grades to occupy the market in order to meet the needs of users at different levels. In the past, for product development with different functions, we often used different design processes to implement them separately, that is, using different design data to produce boards with different functions to realize the product. The disadvantage is that the cost is increased and the design cycle is prolonged, and at the same time, the artificial unreliability of the product is increased. Many manufacturers now use derivation technology to solve the above problems, that is, use the same design process data to derive products of different functional series, so as to achieve the purpose of reducing costs and improving quality. In order to meet the needs of users, many EDA manufacturers have added Derived Rule Check (DRC) functions to their products, such as: Mentor Graphics' BoardStation, Zuken-Redac, etc. Taking BoardStation as an example, it provides a complete The distribution of the derivative functional modules of the front-end circuit design, the physical layout rule inspection to the back-end, the component list of different derivative products, the production and processing data, the light drawing data and the processing assembly drawing, etc., completely ended this kind of design trouble.