New design tools that meet the needs of 21st century electronic product developers.

Modern electronic products contain increasingly complicated printed circuit boards (PCBs). From initial system conception to final packaging, an increasing amount of detail is defined. During product development, the more data that can flow seamlessly from one stage to the next, the better.

However, what designers are using today is reliant on software platforms developed in the mid to late 1990s, or as far back as the 1980s. While all programs have obviously seen upgrades, they struggle to keep up with rapid advances in hardware and software technology.

Today, programs can run on 64-bit machines but they don’t have actual 64-bit architecture. They can improve the utilization of a processor, but cannot take advantage of multi-threading with multi-core processors. They can export their 2D designs to a 3D format, but the 3D view is not native to the software. At some point, you have to stop doing the bolt-on approach and start again with an updated architecture where all aspects of the software are designed to take full advantage of both today’s and tomorrow’s technology.

Like all EDA software providers, Zuken was updating existing software modules and introducing new ones as needed. But, it became apparent that the only way to really jump ahead was to create a new suite based on 64-bit architecture, take advantage of the full power of  multi-core processing, and utilize the latest graphics engines.

The Challenges in Developing a New Architecture

The amount of work to achieve a paradigm shift like this is tremendous. There are hundreds of thousands of lines of code to develop, but because of Zuken’s forward thinking, the existing software suite had been designed looking toward the future. While a new fundamental architecture was needed, the data structures did not need to change. These were sitting unused inside of programs that were waiting for the hardware to catch up. For example, 3D structures were already in the database even though the software didn’t support it at the time.

Front End Design Tools

Just after releasing CR-5000 in the mid-‘90s, Zuken started a "System-level Concept Design" project as the first step toward the next generation system. This tool would take a customer’s initial requirements and turn them into a high-level design ready for detailed implementation. Many prototypes were made and there were numerous meetings to brainstorm with customers who tested these prototypes.

It didn’t take long to realize that this process was going to require some time to gather enough information to define the final specifications. Because the designers had never seen this kind of tool in the past, they did not have clear image of what a new tool for initial planning for electrical system design should look like.

Research started in 1996. The first results were Design Gateway (system-level circuit design) followed by System Planner (system-level design planning environment). The products were released to some limited customers who were dedicated to creating breakthroughs in their the design process. Many suggestions and ideas came from these collaborations.

Back End Design Tools

Zuken’s CR-5000 Board Designer was originally developed with the idea of single-board design. At the time, managing a complete product design was done outside the CAD system.  Also, the process to manage a product design was different from company to company, so it was very challenging for Zuken to capture the true market requirements for multi-board design.

During the "System-level Design Planning" project, it was discovered that PCB design could not be just a "single board design" tool. For designing complex systems with backplanes or multi-die packages inside of the system, a hierarchical structure was required. But again, it was not easy to realize the practical performance needed for this within the restrictions of the hardware technologies available at that time.

The appearance of 64-bit OS without memory size limitations, multi-core CPU and multi-thread processing technologies, opened the door to truly realize a new system-level design solution. 3D graphics engines opened the door to using native 3D graphics in the new system, allowing it to achieve the graphics performance of sophisticated computer games. The maturity of all these new hardware technologies made it possible to finalize Design Force as the next generation PCB design tool with a multi-board hierarchy structure.

Meeting Challenges

From the software engineering side, Zuken developers had enough combined experience to alleviate most issues. The biggest challenge was in developing a specification for the new design process and tools, because neither the Zuken team nor their customers had experience in developing or using a multi-board, system-level way of designing.

The Zuken team struggled to define the specification of  a new user interface for multi-board PCB with 3D graphics. To better understand these, rather than working with existing CAD systems, they turned to unravelling the technology behind 3D computer games on Nintendo and PlayStationÒ3.

Many types of input devices were tested to define which was best suited for operating a next generation PCB CAD system. There were many discussions with the peripheral production companies that produce 3D mouse and touch pad or touch screen devices.

Zuken has long relied on what is known in-house as "Zuken's high quality software development process" which was organized in the engineering of Zuken’s CR-5000. The quality of CR-5000 software was number one in the EDA industry already. For example, the number of the fatal defects that required a patch release with CR-5000 Revision 12 was only one in the past three years.

When it came to test cases for checking the specification of functions and operation, all of the tests for realizing high software quality were done under Zuken control in-house. The difficult part was figuring out how to realize better specification quality with each function and easier operation of the user interface that could be readily used and accepted by electrical designers. Zuken had four partner customers doing early evaluation of the tools. The purposes of the evaluation projects were:

• Checking the operation of each function by real electrical designers.
• Checking usability and ease of use in the practical design process.
• Checking the smooth integration of the utilities and functions.
• Checking the feasibility of the functions and performance in the practical design process.

Suggestions from these customers were used to improve the quality of the specifications and ease of use before releasing the full CR-8000 product family.

Existing Technology vs. New – the “Reader’s Digest” View

The CR-8000 product family is not magic. It is the result of years of hard work and close collaboration with customers. As a result, there are a number of innovations that have been developed along the way that set it apart not only from Zuken’s CR-5000 suite, but from all similar products on the market today.

System Planner

Currently, this project step is often done using “dumb” (graphic based, non-electrical) tools such as Visio and Excel where architects draw pictures and create lists. The person doing the design can look at these for guidance, but they essentially have to start over, using them as a reference to create a workable design.

System Planner changes this by allowing a system architect to define, at a high level, the functions and features in a product, and to decide where those functions will reside on the boards inside of that product. There is also a 3D view within the program where a virtual board can be placed inside of a virtual enclosure to see if they fit. Another view allows the architect to create a bill of material (BOM) and other parametric data.

The software enables the architect to optimize the form, fit and function of the design by dragging functions from the logical view into a board design, and from board to board to optimize the function placement and partitioning of the system. When something is changed in one of the views, the other views update automatically.

While System Planner doesn’t create a detailed design or a final product, it gives guidance to the actual engineers and board designers, to make their jobs easier and intelligently communicate the design intent.

It feeds all of its data into the detailed design process, allowing electronic designers to start with system-level circuit and layout data. Because other PCB design systems were developed for single board design, they cannot understand the system as a whole. System Planner shows how everything connects together without external programs or customization. This is a huge timesaver when it is time to create the detailed design (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Upfront system planning in a single environment addresses multiple engineering disciplines and shows how everything connects together without external programs.

Design Gateway

Design Gateway is the next link in the process. It is the circuit engineering environment for the electronic product. It takes input from System Planner and enables the design engineer to pick up where the system architect left off.

This step is used to define and verify the logical functions of the system. Engineers can access embedded constraint management and signal integrity analysis, and optionally integrate their existing simulation tools, such as analog, mixed signal and RF. This provides designers with a complete engineering platform for system-level circuit design.

Because it was designed from the beginning as part of a multi-board platform, Design Gateway understands and drives the detailed implementation of the entire system. Using advanced hierarchical design techniques, it is able to produce netlists for any of number of boards in the system from single or multiple logical circuit designs, keeping them all correlated and synchronized.

As a totally new architectural approach to the process, it provides a systematic methodology to engineering a product at the logical design stage that is easy to adopt in any design process (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Circuit design with embedded simulation provides advanced hierarchical design techniques.

Design Force

Design Force is the physical PCB layout program and the only native 3D program available today. PCB design today is done in 2D and works fine for many applications. Very complex designs can be developed using 2D. But some problems are much easier to solve in 3D and some can’t be effectively addressed in any other way.

For example, a designer can turn the PCB sideways to view and edit the layer stack-up. Looking at the 3D display, the designer can view how blind, buried and through hole vias go through the layers.  The designer can push an embedded component down into an inner layer and watch it happen in 3D for accurate placement. The 3D architecture also allows the component to reside in the center of the dielectric with micro-vias connecting to it on both sides. Connectors on two different boards can be aligned and edited simultaneously.

Design Force is the first truly new PCB layout product developed in at least 15 years  (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: System level design in native 3D environment enhances what the designer can manipulate within the layers.

DFM Center

Few steps in the design process are as mission-critical as the links to the manufacturing process. DFM Center (a design for manufacturing tool) provides accurate and complete manufacturing data and documentation. The end goal of the CR-8000 family was to take the process from concept to manufacturing. DFM Center is designed to ensure the layout meets both electrical and manufacturing requirements concurrently, and creates the necessary information for fabrication, assembly and test (see figure 4).

Figure 4: DFM Center allows the user to create designs with manufacturing specifications.

Benefits of 3D

To a large degree, the problems that 3D allows designers to solve fall mostly into the realm high-end technologies. Mainstream problems have mostly been solved in 2D or 2-1/2 D. Design Force offers native 3D, which means that 3D is there whether needed or not -- now or in the future. The way it has been implemented, the user can tap into the benefits of using it, or stick with the 2D they are used to.

By taking advantage of today’s hardware and 3D graphics engines, Design Force performs the same in 2D or 3D. Since it is faster than other PCB design systems, speed is not an issue when using 2D or 3D.

Like the world we live in, a bare board is a three-dimensional object, it has layers. Each of those layers and the laminate that holds them together has a certain thickness that affects the electrical characteristics of the board. For many high-speed applications, impedance controlled traces are common to ensure signal quality and product performance. Also, when dealing with high density interconnect (HDI) applications, it is vital to visualize a design in 3D to effectively design in tight spaces.

Broadside differential pairs (where signal A is on one layer and signal B is on the opposite layer) can be routed in tandem and the engineer can see both traces as they are routed on their respective layers.

Blind and buried vias can be viewed and checked to ensure that combinations that can’t be manufactured are not created. 3D shows how everything stacks up within all the layers as you design in real time, to ensure an accurate, working, manufacturable design.

While 2D physical design can cope with most of the design challenges that confront engineers and designers today, that is sure to change as new design technologies emerge and the struggle to create ever-smaller designs with ever-increasing functionality grows. This makes optimal use of every millimeter of design space essential.

Communication Across All Platforms

One of the discontinuities that exist at the major EDA software providers is that most schematic tools were acquired, not originally developed in-house. They are not natively compatible with the PCB systems they are sold with, so their providers have put a lot of engineering into getting them to work together.

Since CR-8000 was developed from the start as unified solution for system-level design, all tools inherently work together. This means that all data is natively compatible and design requirements are accurately communicated between each step in the design process. All data is tied together as the information is fed from program to program; from architect to the electronic design group all the way through to manufacturing.

Communication between tools is extremely important when it comes to streamlining the concept-to-manufacturing process, mainly because the user of each tool is typically in a different department. System Planner, Design Gateway, Design Force, all understand that this is a system and communicate changes within any one of the programs back to all. The programs, not only receive and transmit changes, they intuitively understand them and react accordingly. With the traditional PCB approach of one board at a time, many problems are not found until a prototype is built and tested. That is expensive.

No Designer Left Behind

To address the desires of the new generation of electronic designers entering the field, Zuken worked with the user interface to add a touchpad that works like a touchscreen. The user can access both the mouse and touchpad simultaneously, creating “two handed design work”. One hand can be panning and zooming while the other is selecting with the mouse. Using the touchpad with the mouse or simply one or the other, is a choice left up to the designer. All the capabilities are there.

Some things are still menu-driven so as not to cause complete culture shock, but at the end of the day, basic operations use a streamlined method that reduces mouse travel time by about 80%. The user doesn’t need to constantly access popup menus or go back up to the top to do menu picks.

Certain people won’t need all the new technology yet, which is fine. They have good software programs they are used to that will carry them through. Not every company has upper tier issues. A washing machine uses printed circuit boards but you don’t need CR-8000 to create them. A satellite, or the latest in densely packaged electronics going into a miniaturized medical device is another story.

For large companies, the embedded data management solutions may be one of the biggest reasons to move up to this technology. Divisions can share libraries and access each other’s data, without the uncontrolled and cumbersome common approaches such as email and FTP.

System planners and designers who operate at the high-end of technology  are ready for change. Just like the innovative products and systems they are designing – devices that will be their next generation – the methods designers use to create these products and systems are also evolving. This is just the first. Eventually all design software companies will come on board. Whether this system suite or another future platform modeled on it, the goal is to make all design steps interlinked and to make the process easier, faster, lower cost, and to turn out better end products.

For full information on the latest in the CR-8000 product suite, for any other Zuken products or to ask a question, visit the Zuken website.