Peralex Electronics recently purchased a comprehensive set of electronic design automation (EDA) tools from Mentor Graphics, the global market leader in PCB technology. The investment was made possible by an attractive trade-in offer from Mentor Graphics who took into consideration the company's previous investments in PCB and HDL tools from other vendors.
As a result of the trade-in deal, Peralex Electronics has acquired a single highly integrated ECAD solution that addresses its data management, complex PCB design, FPGA design and signal integrity simulation requirements in full. In this article, the company describes how it set about choosing a suitable solution by defining its requirements and the comprehensive evaluation of various offerings.
Peralex is a dynamic company, that works on the cutting-edge of technology. It started in 1987 with a focus on the use of digital-signal processing (DSP) in the radio field. Based in Bergvliet, Cape Town, the company sells products of a world-class standard to international customers. Peralex provides complete turnkey signal-processing solutions, from conceptual design to the manufactured products that are used in sophisticated radio, sonar and radar systems. The complexity and frequency of operation of the hardware designs require that extensive simulations are conducted to minimise the time-to-market.
Motivation for changing tools
Peralex's complex hardware designs have the following technologies and requirements:
* High layer count (up to 18 layers/2 mm thickness) and high component density PCBs, which include micro via technology and controlled-impedance signal routing.
* PCB real estate densities of up to 80%.
* Netlist counts of up to 2000 nets and 8000 connections.
* High Tg and low-loss FR4 materials.
* Multiple high pin-count BGAs.
* High pin-count (1152 pin-count) Xilinx FPGAs, which include high speed differential serial data links.
* Multiple low voltage/high power supplies.
Previous tool set limitations
The original electronic design automation solution comprised of a VHDL simulation tool and a PCB design tool from different vendors. Low integration between the VHDL simulation tool and the PCB design tool requires a manual checking process to verify the accuracy of the FPGA pin out. This is both time consuming and error prone.
Less than optimum support of certain FPGA cores by the VHDL simulation tool vendor resulted in delays in obtaining simulation models for cores. This made Peralex aware of the importance of OEM relationships between HDL and FPGA vendors. Mentor Graphics has OEM relationships with all the leading programmable logic vendors and with the company's strict adherence to standards, unnecessary project delays could be avoided.
Requirement for new technology
The products developed by Peralex require the use of the latest high-speed FPGA technologies with serial communications at the GHz level. At such high frequencies, 'signal integrity' (S.I.) simulations become an important design consideration. A program was thus initiated to evaluate which S.I. software simulation tool would be the most appropriate for Peralex's requirements. The program was a joint undertaking by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Peralex.
The evaluation criteria of the Signal Integrity software simulation tools were twofold:
* Evaluate the S.I. software tool from the existing PCB design tool vendor and one other vendor.
* Evaluate each S.I. software tool for its ease-of-use, its simulation capabilities and the level of integration into the existing PCB design tool.
The evaluation was conducted over 10 months and the findings were as follows:
* Support for the evaluation was not equal from all the vendors.
* Not all the S.I. software simulation tools are 'easy to use'.
* Not all the S.I. software simulation tools required the same amount of set-up.
The conclusion of the evaluation was that HyperLynx would be the most appropriate signal Integrity software simulation tool for Peralex for these reasons:
* Ease of use.
* Peralex found that excellent support was provided by Mentor Graphics.
* Mentor Graphics' commitment to continuous development of the HyperLynx Signal Integrity simulation tool and other Mentor Graphics ECAD software.
Review of toolset
The decision to invest in HyperLynx again raised the concern about integration between different tool vendors. While HyperLynx does support interfaces to all leading PCB design tools, Peralex anticipated that it - being a Mentor Graphics tool - would be particularly well integrated with PADS, Mentor Graphics' PCB design solution.
Peralex also wanted to address the forward/back annotation problem between high pin-count FPGAs and the PCB. The Mentor Graphics I/O Designer provides an intelligent interface between the programmable logic and PCB design environments.
Peralex was also aware of the newly-released ModelSim Designer technology, which provides a combination of graphical HDL capability and HDL simulation from ModelSim, the de facto standard HDL simulator of the programmable logic market.
Tool trade-in concerns
Since the original EDA solution enabled integration into a component database common to the Peralex ERP solution, this became a pre-requisite for the acquisition of DX Designer and DX Databook - the equivalent Mentor Graphic tools.
Both DX Designer and DX Databook were evaluated to determine if they met the pre-requisites and the company found that only a few changes would be required in order to satisfy this requirement.
In summary
The decision to acquire HyperLynx initiated the decision to investigate other Mentor Graphics EDA tools. Peralex evaluated PADS (PCB), ModelSim Designer (HDL), I/O Designer (interface between PCB and HDL), DxDesigner (schematic capture), DxDatabook (data management) and HyperLynx (signal integrity tools) as replacements for the original electronic design automation solution. The benefit of this being the high level of integration between the tools of a single vendor, namely; Mentor Graphics.
Mentor Graphics recognised the prior investments made by Peralex in other vendor tools and was also sensitive to the budget limitations of the customer.
ASIC Design Services, the South African distributor for Mentor Graphics, offered excellent service in the protracted negotiations between Mentor and Peralex to settle on a mutually beneficial price/performance ratio.
Peralex concluded that it would gain the following key benefits in choosing EDA tools from Mentor Graphics, one of the world's market leaders in EDA:
* Sound investment, low risk.
* Increased level of software simulation in designs in order to reduce design iterations and improve time to market of products.
* Improved level of EDA integration and an improved productivity level when applied to FPGA-based designs.
For more information contact Glen Thiele, Peralex, +27 (0)21 710 7444, [email protected] or Tony Dal Maso, ASIC Design Services, +27 (0)11 315 8316, [email protected]
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