Altium Designer extended to respond to high-speed design challenges

With the increasing challenges concerning high-speed signals – not only because of high clock frequencies, but also because of faster edge rates – more and more PCB designers need to have analysis tools that allow them to successfully design with fewer iterations. The two new extensions for Altium Designer, the ICD Stackup Planner and ICD Power Distribution Network (PDN) Planner, are accessible from within the design tool to provide for seamless analysis.

“The ICD analysis software complements Altium Designer by empowering designers to accurately and confidently route complex, high-speed designs” said Barry Olney, Managing Director and CEO of In-Circuit Design. “Altium opens up a broader market for our products and gives Altium Designer customers the tools they need for competitive advantage at a reasonable cost.”

ICD provides a centralized, shared, impedance planning environment that connects materials, PDN analysis, stackup planning, signal integrity, PCB design and fabrication, consolidating the impedance control from schematic to fabrication.The impedance is planned pre-layout and flows through the design process to fabrication.

ICD Stackup Planner
Attention to critical placement, fanout, matched length and differential pair routing are vital for more and more mainstream designs. However, planning the multilayer PCB stackup configuration is one of the most important aspects in achieving the best possible performance of a product. The ICD Stackup Planner enables engineers and PCB designers to master this challenge.

Key Benefits of ICD Stackup Planner include:
● Unprecedented simulation speed, ease of use and accuracy at an affordable price.
● Accurate impedance control for rigid-flex design flows seamlessly, in the Altium environment, from concept to fabrication.
● The 8,800 part dielectric materials library allows the simulation of the actual materials used by your fabricator.
● Unique field solver computation of multiple differential pair definitions per layer.
● Automatic creation of high-speed design rules in Altium Designer.

ICD PDN Planner
A typical high-speed, multilayer PCB has five or six individual power supplies that all serve a different purpose, and must be regulated to maintain power integrity during high current switching up to the maximum frequency. With a frequency range up to 100 GHz, the ICD PDN Planner analyzes the AC impedance of each on-board PDN, including capacitor selection, to ensure a broad spectrum of noise reduction, giving a concise graphical view of the entire network including plane resonance peaks.

Key benefits of the ICD PDN Planner include:
● Unprecedented simulation speed, ease of use and accuracy at an affordable price.
● Accurate PDN management flows seamlessly, in the Altium environment, from concept to production.
● Comprehensive capacitor library of 5,000 parts, allows the simulation and optimization of the actual capacitors extracted from manufacturer’s SPICE models.
● Intuitive and easy to use – gives all members of your PCB design team the ability to quickly analyze power integrity without the usual steep learning curve associated with complex software.

Both the ICD Stackup Planner and the ICD PDN Planner are available immediately.