Incorporating FPGAs into PCBs designs can be tricky and involves a constant dialog of communication between the FPGA designer and design and PCB/layout designer throughout the process – which can be tiresome, tedious and, worst of all, time-consuming. Introduction to FPGAs If we look inside the box of any electronic product around us, many would [...]
CR-5000 Lightning
As a former PCB designer I always looked forward to the next release of the software that I was designing with. Like a kid unwrapping a gift, I would open up the What’s New HTML file and read through all the amazing new goodies designed to make my job that much easier. To this day, as an AE for Zuken, I still have that childlike spirit when I get my first glimpse of what’s new in CR-5000 and this year was no exception when I checked out Revision 14…
Are your complex memory networks being designed without full knowledge of what’s going on inside of those large BGAs? Do you know what’s going on inside of your BGA devices, but do not have sufficient functionality in your ECAD software to address advance timing skews? The latest controller techniques for DDR3 include read and write [...]
This may seem a strange question for someone who’s made their living out of signal integrity for so long, but things have changed. There was a period in the 80s and 90s that I call the SI Deficit: the period when signal integrity issues took engineers by surprise and my specialty was even called “Black Magic”. The design landscape has changed radically since then – the main reason for this being standardization…
Recently, a discussion flared up in our office after someone questioned the use of the term ‘trunk routing’. They wondered whether it’s really a term in its own right – or just a fancy name for bus routing? The question was raised by someone who’s not that familiar with our high-speed design tools – so [...]
Last week we exhibited at the Designer Community Expo (DCE) at the recent Synopsys Users Group (SNUG) in the Silicon Valley, in fact this is the first of many of the 2011 SNUG events that we are going to be getting involved in again this year. The DCE is a unique opportunity to meet Synopsys and [...]
