05 April 2007

Thinking outside the box

  • Thinking outside the box

How a unified design environment frees the designer to innovate at the system level. By Mike Richardson.

Great ideas unfold as they are developed and, together with time to market pressures, demand that the all phases of the design progress in parallel.
But as designs become more complex, designers have always struggled to solve the problem of meshing together data from different parts of the process. Unfortunately, tool providers have tended to take the easy option and ‘stick’ the design together with tools that create intermediate files to transfer design data from, for example, the placed and routed fpga across to the board design. Unfortunately, electronics design is not a simple, linear process.
“To tackle this challenge, we need to take a step back and look at the bigger design picture,” explained Altium Europe’s vp sales and support, EMEA, Frank Hoschar. “PCB design cannot be considered independently. We need to look at hardware design, programmable hardware design and software development as a whole and provide a design environment that unifies these traditionally disparate design disciplines. This requires more than passing intermediate files back and forth between separate design programs. It requires real, platform level unification of all the processes involved.”

Author
Mike Richardson

Supporting Information

Downloads
9267\Outside The Box.pdf

Websites
http://www.altium.com
http://www.priware.com
http://www.zuken.com

Companies
Altium Ltd
Zuken Ltd

This material is protected by Findlay Media copyright
See Terms and Conditions.
One-off usage is permitted but bulk copying is not.
For multiple copies contact the sales team.

Do you have any comments about this article?

Add your comments

Name
 
Email
 
Comments
 

Your comments/feedback may be edited prior to publishing. Not all entries will be published.
Please view our Terms and Conditions before leaving a comment.

 

Related Articles

Embedded World: Altium, FTDI C

Altium has announced the full range of board level IC components from Future ...

ADI unveils new FMC boards

Analog Devices has introduced two data converter FMC boards (fpga mezzanine ...

Electronics design made easier

element14 has teamed up with Microchip and Matrix to introduce the new PIC18 ...

EDA enters a brave new world

There is a school of thought that believes hardware/software codesign is ...

Avoid counterfeit electronics

It's been discussed and analysed for years, yet there does not seem to be an ...

AMD cuts to the core

The discontinuation last year by Intel of the Pentium M and Celeron M ...

Oryx board - reference design

The ORYX Board is an ultra low power reference design Sharp Microelectronics ...

High speed board design

Istvan Nagy, electronics design engineer at Blue Chip Technology, a leading UK ...

Designs, ideas and solutions for today’s ...

Developers of small, fan-less systems are confronted with a growing list of ...

Analogue front end

CML Microcircuits' CMX7861 'FirmCODEC' is a full featured analogue front end ...

XOs and VCXOs

Rakon has launched a new family of low noise, frequency selectable XO ...

Starter kit STM32F407ZG mcu

IAR Systems has announced a new 32bit kit for STMicroelectronics' first ARM ...

embedded world 2012

Taking place from 28 February to 1 March 2012.

Designing for EMC

A two day intensive course 15-16 March 2012, Birmingham Science Park, Aston.

Printed Electronics Europe

3rd-4th April 2012, Berlin, Germany

Windows Embedded Compact 7

Considering using Windows Embedded Compact 7? TI offers a boards support ...

TI's I2C Bus Solutions Training Video

The I2C Bus Solutions training video from Texas Instruments provides useful ...

Reduce board space for signal conditioning ...

According to TI, the 'industry's first eight-channel, 34 V digital-input ...

Synopsys buys Magma

Magma has been nipping at the heels of the leading eda companies for some time, ...

Most expensive component

With great apologies to William Shakespeare, "a resistor, a resistor, my ...

Mentor is takeover target

The electronics design automation – or EDA – world is complex, but for one ...

Wally Rhines, veteran, EDA

EDA veteran Wally Rhines tells Graham Pitcher that system design is the future ...

Herbert Truppe interview

Herbert Truppe, director, Product Management & Application, ...

John Isaac, Mentor Graphics

Graham Pitcher talks with John Isaac, director of market development for Mentor ...