OrCAD PCB SI

Analysis and Design Environment
OrCAD PCB signal integrity (SI) provides a scalable, highly cost effective pre- and post-layout system interconnect design and analysis environment.

PCB SI delivers advanced, board level analysis and is tightly integrated with OrCAD PCB Designer. By analyzing their design pre-layout designers can better anticipate and resolve potential design issues, resulting in higher quality designs and fewer iterations. By doing this analysis pre-layout designers can determine the proper rules and constraints for their design. This starts design on the correct path, meaning less revision will be necessary later in the design process. Also, with PCB SI you can test changes at any time during the design. It is easy to generate design constraints from simulation results to drive board implementation and make revisions. Constraints and models are embedded directly in the board design file.

SigXplorer Module
OrCAD PCB SI provides an electrical view of the physical interconnect and a simulation cockpit for analysis of critical high-speed signals.

Users can explore a net before schematics are created by using the SigXplorer module in a standalone mode. SigXplorer provides various stripline and microstrip models–lossy or lossless–to get started with the exploration. Since OrCAD PCB SI integrates seamlessly with OrCAD PCB Editor, users can extract a net in the pre-route or post-route stage right into SigXplorer. Users can then quickly analyze the signal using SPICE-based simulation.

SigXplorer also provides graphical topology exploration for pre and post-route design functionality. View, simulate, and edit topologies. Sweep topology parameters to identify solution space. Solution space becomes a constraint that guides PCB designers to first-pass electrical compliance.

Single Database Integration
PCB Editor & SI integration eliminates design translation issues so there is no risk of lost data objects.

OrCAD Signal Explorer provides design verification directly from the OrCAD PCB Editor database. Seamless integration with PCB Editor eliminates database conversion and possible translation issues. A common database architecture, use model, and library offer SI solutions that are fully scalable to Allegro® PCB SI products, allowing engineers to incorporate more technologies as their designs and design challenges increase in complexity.

Comprehensive SI Analysis
OrCAD PCB SI helps designs quickly find and resolve signal quality issues that can damage product quality.

The consequences of not properly diagnosing these issues can be very costly and lead to product defects or malfunctions. SI analysis can also help lower costs by helping designers identify areas where cheaper (lower tolerance) components can be used without sacrificing performance. Designers can be confident in the results from PCB SI because it utilizes an advanced electromagnetic field solver. Field solvers provide the highest level of accuracy by calculating directly from Maxwell's equations.

OrCAD PCB SI included two field solvers:

• Bem2D – Quasi-static 2D field solver for frequencies below 1GHz
• EMS2D – Full wave, wide spectrum 2D field solver for use from DC up to THz.

OrCAD PCB SI helps eliminate these risks by performing checks of these crucial signal analysis types:

• Reflection - Typical time based analysis of a single net to analyze termination schemes and signal delay times
  
• Crosstalk - Amount of voltage induced on nearby victim nets
  
• EMI - Amount of energy that a trace radiates

Model Integrity
The Model Integrity module provides an editing environment within OrCAD PCB SI that allows the creation, manipulation, and validation of models quickly and easily.

This module includes a model browser and syntax checker for models written in IBIS as well as for advanced models written in DML. OrCAD PCB SI accepts device models from a variety of digital modeling formats— including support for the IBIS modeling standard—which means models created by most semiconductor manufacturers can be used. In addition, OrCAD PCB SI provides DML, a next-generation modeling language for more complex devices. This flexible macro-modeling extension language augments IBIS and allows state-of-the-art I/O functionality to be modeled quickly and accurately.

OrCAD PCB SI supports a variety of models and simulation engines, including:

• TLSim
• IBIS 5.0 support
• IBIS ICM model support
• Spectre-to-DML conversion
• HSPICE-to-IBIS conversion
• HSPICE – simulate encrypted HPSICE models within Allegro PCB SI
• Macro modeling support (DML)