Altium and Keysight Technologies are teaming up to help engineers create and track design iterations with cutting-edge simulation capabilities.
Keysight has developed a suite of products within its PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS) framework to provide solutions along the entire electronics development cycle, from design simulation and prototype validation to network performance optimization to automated software testing and more. These products are versatile enough to serve a variety of industries.
Printed circuit board (PCB) design cycles often involve numerous and extensive iterations. As a PCB design evolves, layout engineers must communicate design changes to mechanical engineers and signal integrity specialists. This can cause significant delays in the overall design cycle.
As design complexity only continues to increase—and the speed at which PCBs are designed and manufactured keeps getting faster—signal and power reliability are becoming more critical. A poorly designed PCB could result in a failed electronic device.
One solution to improve the PCB design process is to perform signal integrity simulations earlier in the design process, using schematic-based pre-layout simulations. This helps avoid reworking the PCB layout later.
PCB layout engineers strive to develop designs that are as efficient and effective as possible to avoid such rework. At the same time, signal integrity engineers need more convenient access to sanitized layout data. Keysight’s PathWave ADS aims to facilitate the collaboration between engineers.
“Today signal and power integrity engineers check the electrical performance of the PCB using PathWave ADS to perform electromagnetic extraction, channel simulation and to test for compliance to high-speed digital standards,” said Stephen Slater, Keysight’s product manager for PathWave ADS. “Yet, when they find an issue to fix, the primary communication method is through phone calls, email and screen captures. This can be improved.”
Keysight has been looking for ways to streamline data sharing between CAD tools and electronic design automation simulation platforms to identify design issues more effectively—and share that data with stakeholders no matter where in the production cycle the issues arise.
That’s where Altium and its Nexar partner network comes in. As part of the program, Keysight will be able to connect its PathWave platform to other partners through the Nexar API. This enables other network participants to use PathWave to facilitate collaboration—putting Keysight’s advanced simulation platform in the hands of more hardware engineers and PCB designers.
“With Nexar and Altium 365, it’ll be much easier to keep track of conversations, and design revisions, ensuring everything is in one place, including comments, documented simulation assumptions, simulation results and files, notifications, and conversations key stakeholders need to know about,” said Slater.
With Nexar API, intermediate files are no longer needed. The API provides straightforward programmatic access to a wide variety of design parameters for software applications or systems such as CAD/CAM software, simulation and analysis, product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). As a result, data exchanges are streamlined—and the design process is expedited from schematics to manufacturing, making it possible to get electronics products into the marketplace more easily and faster.
“The partnership with Altium helps Keysight further grow their business while transforming the electronics design, development, and manufacturing process from isolated tool chains and disconnected processes into a streamlined, next generation workflow that is connected by a comprehensive data model for printed circuit boards,” said Ted Pawela, chief ecosystem officer at Altium.
“Our PathWave software framework allows interoperability across our customers’ entire product development lifecycle,” said Tom Lillig, general manager of PathWave Software Solutions at Keysight. “Engineers can use the same measurement software during both their simulation and test phases. This allows our customers’ teams to work more closely together.... We’re thrilled to bring the Altium Nexar PCB design community into the PathWave framework for applications like DDR and PCIe. Keysight is already the industry leader in both the simulation and test of high-speed circuits. Together with Altium, we can complete the end-to-end high-speed PCB design workflow.”
Through its Nexar program, Altium has developed an impressive and growing network of partnerships with technology companies—Keysight will join companies such as Arduino, Arrow, Diotech, Microchip, Samtec, and UltraLibrarian. And thanks to its PathWave product, these companies will find it easier to collaborate and develop more efficient PCB designs.
Read more about innovations in PCB development in Faster, Better PCB Design: Smarter, Cloud-Based Software is the Future.