Mentor Introduces New PCB Design Platform with ‘Shift-left’ Multi-dimensional Verification

https://cdn.pcbdirectory.com/uploads/FILE-mentor-wall-636795202924927866.jpg712370

Electronic hardware and software design solutions provider, Mentor, has released its new printed circuit board (PCB) design platform focused on multi-dimensional verification, the Xpedition.

With the increasing complexities of today’s systems, PCB design managers can be challenged by the lack of robust verification tools and/or the difficulty in applying these tools, to identify problems early in the design development phase. Mentor tools enable engineers to integrate a broad range of easy-to-use verification tools into a PCB design platform within a singular authoring environment to identify problems at the schematic or layout phases. The new Xpedition platform for non-specialist PCB engineers delivers accurate concurrent design analysis and verification, and comprehensive tool integration, helping achieve substantial time and cost savings while delivering higher-quality products.

According to a recent electronics simulation-driven design study by Lifecycle Insights, the average number of design re-spins is 2.9 per project, which amounts to approximately 16 days of unplanned development time and $82.6K (USD) in additional costs. The study found that PCB design teams who adopted a “shift-left” verification methodology across their design processes realized a 14 percent increase in on-time project delivery, reduced re-spins, and overall improved design quality. The broad use of analysis and verification throughout the design phase directly supports engineering management’s efforts to compress the design cycle while improving board system quality. Mentor's advancements in PCB design simulation solutions is a critical enabler to such efforts.

Leveraging industry best-practice processes, the Xpedition verification platform is designed for non-specialist PCB designers to enable quick and intuitive simulation and analysis functions. Launched within the designer’s authoring tool, integrated verification technologies provide automatic model creation, concurrent simulation, cross probing from results, and error reviews within a single environment. The platform is comprised of a broad range of robust technologies: schematic analysis, signal integrity and power integrity analysis, electrical rule checking, thermal simulation, vibration analysis, design-for-fab, assembly and test manufacturability testing. These integrated technologies, applied within a single authoring environment familiar to the designer or design team, provide early virtual design prototypes. The new Xpedition platform introduces a comprehensive, multi-dimensional solution for upfront design verification, from concept to design hand-off for assured manufacturability.

The new Xpedition verification platform incorporates novel technologies in several areas:

• Schematic design verification: new, fully-automated and powerful schematic integrity tool to replace manual visual schematic inspection, eliminating re-spins early in the design by as much as 70 percent.
• Design-for-test analysis: identifies test point requirements that are automatically passed from schematic design to layout as constraints to improve testability coverage. This feature creates test and inspection outputs for machines in process preparation with early diagnostics, thereby lowering the overall cost of testing.

Improved integrations in the new Xpedition platform include:

• Design-for-manufacturability (DFM) Analysis: provides comprehensive DFM analysis covering fabrication, assembly, test, flex/rigid-flex, substrate and panel validation early and concurrently during PCB design, without leaving the layout in the new Xpedition integration environment.
• Electrical Performance Sign-off: automatic electrical rule checking (ERC) quickly identifies critical signal integrity, power integrity and EMI/EMC issues concurrently with PCB layout, potentially accelerating design reviews from days to just minutes.

Click here for to view the whitepaper on the new Xpedition platform technology.

Click here for the webinar by Mentor on the technology.