Over the last few months, I’ve visited dozens of customers talking with them about power distribution design.\u00a0 Power Distribution design on the PCB is one of those areas that is fairly new to many companies, so there is a minimal amount of in-house expertise.\u00a0 Usually there are one or two people that are the go-to guys\/gals for solving a power problem but on the whole, power distribution design (and thus power integrity analysis) is an area that a lot of companies don’t spend a lot of time doing in their design process.<\/p>\n
There are the usual reasons for this – “I don’t have the time”\u00a0 “I don’t have the resources”\u00a0 “I don’t have the money” “I just do what my IC vendor tells me” – all seeming like reasonable excuses.\u00a0 But my question is, how can you afford not to do anything<\/strong><\/em><\/span>?? As one of my bosses use to say “Would you bet your job on that?”<\/p>\n In those terms “would you bet your job on that?”, I don’t know about you, but darned if I’m not going to take the time that is needed to do my engineering due diligence!\u00a0 Seriously, think about all the compromises you have to make in your design and then the fact that a lot of today’s ICs have low voltage cores and high current requirements.\u00a0 You’ve\u00a0 probably got things in your board like copper floods stitched together with as few vias as you can use on multiple layers and no power planes to speak-of, a compromised stackup design, and a bunch of capacitors that you put as close as you could to your ICs, but you’ve really got no idea if they are serving a purpose.\u00a0\u00a0 Wouldn’t it be nice to know if they serve a purpose?\u00a0\u00a0 Wouldn’t you like to tell your boss “yeah, I’ll bet my job on it!”<\/p>\n Maybe you’ve already heard, but let me introduce you to something that I think will make you smile.\u00a0 It can light up your eyes like that Christmas present under the tree you’ve always wanted, or make you smile like finding that random $100 bill in your wallet\/purse – it’s called HyperLynx PI<\/a>. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n What is HyperLynx PI you might ask?\u00a0 Well, let me tell you!<\/p>\n In a nutshell, HyperLynx PI allows you do analysis of IR drop and decoupling on your power nets.\u00a0 You can validate that you meet the DC voltage and current requirements of your ICs.\u00a0 You can also do analysis on capacitor decoupling and voltage ripple on power planes, all with full wave simulation engines.<\/p>\n HyperLynx PI is<\/strong> the best power integrity tool on the planet!\u00a0 Do you think I’m lying?\u00a0 I challenge you to try it out for yourself before you call me a liar!\u00a0 Sure there are other power integrity analysis tools on the market, but what makes HyperLynx PI special?\u00a0 It’s special because it was designed with you, the engineer, in mind.\u00a0 Some people believe that for a tool to be powerful, it’s got to be hard to use.\u00a0 We have a different philosophy here at Mentor.\u00a0 We believe that a tool has to be easy-to-use for you to get value out of it, yet have the power you need to get your job done with high accuracy.\u00a0 You don’t need to have to tweak every little knob every time you need an answer – it shouldn’t be that complicated.\u00a0 We’ve designed HyperLynx PI (as well as HyperLynx SI) so that it’s something any electrical engineer can jump into without having to remember ‘which knob does what’ every time they get in the driver’s seat.<\/p>\n Time is precious these days, especially as resources are harder to come by, so you need to have tools that get you accurate answers without having to read the manual to get them, which is exactly what HyperLynx PI does for you.\u00a0 Accurate answers to your power design questions with fast time-to-results – that’s what we’re about!\u00a0 Don’t let an excuse be your validation methodology, check out what HyperLynx PI has to offer you.\u00a0 If you want more details, check out these links:<\/p>\n Webinar on Optimizing decoupling designs with HyperLynx PI<\/a><\/p>\n Webinar on Identifying DC Drop issues with HyperLynx PI<\/a><\/p>\n