News and New Products

Tool aids in collaborative board and FPGA design

By Michael Santarini, Senior Editor -- EDN, 10/24/2005

Mentor Graphics has bundled some of its PADS and VeriBest circuit-board design software with some of its other legacy circuit-board tools and added new team-collaboration software to the mix to come up with its new Expedition Enterprise flow.

"We've created this core flow to design any PCB," says David Wiens, business development director for Mentor's printed-circuit-board division. "In addition, we integrated many of our tools together to create an overall enterprise design file."

The Expedition Enterprise flow rests on Mentor's DMS (Data Management System) for building and storing library and design data and sharing that with large PLM (product lifecycle management) tools and thus the rest of the enterprise.

On top of that DMS foundation, the company has added the new Constraint Editor System, which allows disparately located design groups to collaborate on not only creating and editing design constraints but also developing a bill-of-materials to share with management and part procurement.

Mentor has also modified several of its design tools to create an integrated enterprise tool. The additions include, for prelayout and signal-integrity analysis, HyperLynx and ICS Pro Explorer, respectively; for FPGA and pc-board integration, I/O Designer; for design definition, DxDesigner with design reuse and variant management; for floorplanning, PCB Planner; for layout, Expedition PCB; and for post-layout and signal-integrity verification and EMI analysis, HyperLynx, ICX Pro Verify and Quiet Expert. Once the layout is complete and verified, users can also run, within Expedition Enterprise, the FabLink XE or Pro manufacturing output software.

Designers can manage and track the entire flow in the DMS part of the Expedition Enterprise software.

In addition, designers can add third-party tools to the flow via traditional interfaces, but those additions won't enjoy all of the collaboration capabilities Mentor has woven into the offering, Wiens said.