PCB design at a turning point

The newest release of Mentor Graphics Corporation’s HyperLynx integrates signal and power integrity analysis, 3D electromagnetic solving and fast rule checking into a single unified environment. Based on the popular HyperLynx signal integrity/power integrity (SI/PI) application, this product offers designers a complete set of analysis technology sufficient for designing any type of high speed digital printed circuit board (PCB). Spanning a range of underlying simulation engines and a graphical user interface (GUI) that supports both quick/interactive and exhaustive batch mode analysis, the HyperLynx product now sets a new standard for deployment of high speed capabilities in one environment.

Dave Kohlmeier, Director, High Speed Products, Mentor Graphics, commented: “PCB systems design is at a turning point because of speed and how fast we all want the world to run. That’s forcing designers to start to simulate and that’s where the ease of use of HyperLynx comes in. That ease of use doesn’t just relate to GUI – it’s a new level of integration where we have a whole new level of solvers and capability in a single tool and there’s also some knowledge embedded in the tool so you don’t need to become an expert to use it.”

David Weins, Business Development Manager, Mentor Graphics added: “The more features you add to software the more discipline it takes to maintain ease of use of that software. And naturally, tool complexity increases with modelling complexity. In addition, as modelling complexity has grown, multiple tools have sprouted up to solve different problems – one tool for power integrity, one for signal integrity, one for 2D analysis etc. So, this increases the number of tools on your desktop and increases the number of times you have to set-up the tools, and integrate a model created in one tool into another.”

“We have deployed a ‘shift left’ strategy where we perform simulation early in the design process to achieve ‘first time right’ products,” stated Hans Klos, CEO of Sintecs BV, Netherlands. “With the new, unified HyperLynx environment, we have one flow where we can do everything – a significant advantage.”

High speed PCBs vary greatly in size, layer count, routing density, signalling speed, types of silicon used and power delivery challenges. Most tool sets offered by a single EDA vendor typically require switching applications and user interfaces for different types of analysis. By contrast, the HyperLynx tool now offers 2D/3D signal and power integrity analysis in a single application, with one GUI. Users can simulate a critical SERDES channel one minute, and then - by selecting a single new menu item - switch to analysis of a large power net’s decoupling.

Mentor has invested heavily in HyperLynx analysis technology, particularly for interconnect modelling. The product now combines a super-fast geometry extraction engine and advanced materials modelling (for wideband dielectrics, copper roughness, etc.) to produce highly accurate simulations.

“This version of HyperLynx is the culmination of intensive investment by Mentor in its high speed tools,” stated A.J. Incorvaia, Vice President and General Manager of Mentor Graphics Systems Design Division. “HyperLynx has long been a widely used high speed tool in the industry - now it’s become the most powerful and best integrated as well. Designers who still think of HyperLynx as primarily ‘fast and easy SI’ need to take a serious, fresh look at how dramatically the product has strengthened and matured.”

SERDES technology adoption has greatly increased the frequencies used in digital signalling- even a ‘mainstream’ protocol like PCIe Gen3 runs at 8 Gb/s. The new HyperLynx release provides advanced electromagnetic solvers, including full wave 3D, enabling users to keep pace with increasingly fast SERDES technologies. The 3D engine is deeply integrated, so the user never has to learn the intricacies of a full wave solver environment. This integration ensures that signal and power structure geometries are passed - electromagnetic (EM) ports are formed, simulations are run, and S-parameter results are incorporated into time domain simulations - automatically.

The new HyperLynx release has added multiple engines - two 2.5D solvers, the industry’s fastest DC/IR-drop simulator, and a fast quasi-static 3D solver - to enable a full set of power integrity features, all of which are available side-by-side in the same application as the HyperLynx signal integrity capabilities. The second, more advanced 2.5D solver is capable of pure power and mixed signal and power modelling, which can be used to add accuracy to SI simulations when simultaneous switching noise (SSN) complications are suspected.

Simulating every detail of a PCB’s signal routing and power delivery is overwhelming. Tuning raw simulation capabilities to the specific requirements of standard interfaces and protocols (like DDRx memory and 100-Gb/s Ethernet SERDES) eases the user’s burden and provides streamlined, summary pass/fail judgement on entire interfaces. The HyperLynx wizard for DDRx memory interfaces pioneered easy set-up, automated whole-bus simulation and consolidated results reporting - and is now extended to DDR4 and LPDDR4 interfaces. HTML-based reporting allows creation of design documentation and internal web-based ‘publication’ of results.

In the SERDES arena, protocols that support Channel Operating Margin (COM) allow checking the quality of links based on a specific, complex set of simulation steps for a single pass/fail number per-channel. The new HyperLynx tool offers a robust commercial implementation of COM for 100GbE signalling, with simulation details fully automated.

This more robust HyperLynx version can efficiently handle very large layouts (including extra-deep stack-ups, huge net counts and entire multi-board systems), multi-processor and other simulation engine performance enhancements and caching and re-use of extracted models.

In addition to improving products, Mentor is empowering engineers to tackle emerging challenges through a global educational workshop series partnering with industry expert Eric Bogatin. The series will address new high speed technologies, as well as best-in-class methodologies, tools and processes to effectively adopt the technologies.

“At 28Gb/s and above, everything matters, and engineers must understand the essential signal integrity principles that connect physical design with electrical performance in the very high speed regime. To meet the demands of next-generation products, the successful engineer must accelerate up the learning curve,” stated Dr Eric Bogatin, adjunct professor at ECEE, University of Colorado, Boulder, and director of the Teledyne LeCroy Front Range Signal Integrity Lab. “One of the most effective ways of learning and understanding the essential design principles is through exploring virtual prototypes using simulation tools like Mentor Graphics HyperLynx with its very low learning curve.”