SAN JOSE -- Avishtech today announced the formal launch of its online simulation and design service for its proprietary PCB stack-up design and simulation software.
The new service enables those companies that don’t require a full-on subscription to its PCB toolsets to take advantage of the capabilities provided within them and also additional value-added services such as dimensional stability simulations and design to requirement services, without having to purchase a complete annual subscription or run the toolsets themselves.
"What prompted this was smaller OEMs that said, 'We have a very small team, we don’t do a lot of designs in a given year,' and they wanted a time-based subscription," Keshav Amla, founder and CEO, Avishtech, told PCD&F. "But this was something we wanted to offer from the beginning. The dimensional stability simulations are ones we don’t offer in Gauss Stack (the company's stackup design and simulation tool). We wanted to build this so a board shop can submit for the dimensional stability simulation, get the results very quickly, and (maintain their schedules)."
Because the service is provided on an as-needed basis, key customers, including board shops and OEMs of all sizes, can quickly and readily avail themselves of the toolsets’ capabilities without having to go through the lengthy purchase and qualification process that most corporations’ internal processes require, while critical design requirements languish and go unmet, the firm said. In addition, this service enables customers to have their designs completely simulated at a higher level of accuracy and granularity than offered in competitive toolsets and thus enables them to avoid having to build expensive, multiple test boards, Avishtech said in a press release.
“In addition to offering access to the functionality of our toolsets on an as-needed basis, we are also offering our customers the ability to simply place an order, provide the information necessary to run the simulations and receive the results without their needing to learn how to use a particular software or determine how to interpret the results. While the Gauss suite of tools is exceptionally easy to use, our frictionless process takes this ease-of-use to a completely new level,” Amla said.
Among the services offered within Gauss Synthesis are broadband extraction of Dk, DF, and RMS roughness. "Currently, many OEMs don’t rely on directly measured dielectric properties, instead building insertion loss test vehicles, from which dielectric properties are extracted," Amla said. "These existing methods are costly, unreliable, and tied to specific loss models that may not reflect the actual physics, rendering them not very useful and subject to interpretation. In addition, this whole process can take many months. Smaller OEMs don’t typically even have access to these methods, at all, due to prohibitive cost. With our Broadband Extraction capability, as found in Gauss 2D, this data can be extracted reliably and accurately, because our physics-based, machine-learning enhanced method is not tied to any particular loss model, all at a greatly reduced cost compared to the alternative approaches.”
Broadband Extraction takes an input set of measured S-parameters as a touchstone file and decouples to show dieletric loss, zero-roughness conductor loss, and conductor roughness loss. Losses further decomposed into conductor roughness parameters or frequency-dependent effective Dk or Df. OEMs can now see what the circuit actually sees," Amla told PCD&F.
The dimensional stability simulation is available only through Gauss Synthesis, though it is built on the Gauss Stack framework. "Board shops of all sizes lose out on massive sums of money and time trying to solve registration issues," Amla asserts. "Each new stackup design requires a scout lot to determine compensation factors. With Gauss Synthesis, a board shop can get the compensation factors needed for successful registration without ever having to run a scout lot – again, offered at a very attractive price-point.”
As of now, designs simulations are limited to rigid boards. Flex and rigid-flex are "on the company roadmap but not available yet," Amla said. "If someone has a complex set of requirements, we can help you figure out what to do. That’s where the synthesis becomes more important."
With Gauss Synthesis the focus has been on optimizing the cost of the acquisition process in a variety of ways. Amla explains, “We are focused on providing our customers a variety of ways and purchase options to take advantage of our technology and products. Sometimes, new tool purchases may be line items in an annual budget and if new needs arise, there may not be the funds available to make another major acquisition. In addition, it can also be difficult for product developers to find the time necessary to conduct a trial of the software to make sure it will address their specific design needs as well as be the ‘best bang for the buck’ for their projects and design environment. With Gauss Synthesis, designers can make the business case very clear to their management and purchasing teams by showcasing the value of the analyses offered, without having to conduct a time-consuming software trial. Gauss Synthesis also offers an all-encompassing service, namely the design of stackup on a turn-key basis taking disparate requirements such as loss, reliability and manufacturability and synthesizing them into an optimal design ready for use. In essence the services replace and augment a process that can take months and lighten the load of the engineering teams.”
Even if a company is only designing one or two of these products per year, that may be manufactured in volume, they still need the features and functions available in Gauss Stack and Gauss 2D. As Amla explains, “We’re offering a win/win solution with Gauss Synthesis. Our customers can have access to the functionality of our toolsets, on an affordable per-design basis, and be assured that the feedback they receive through the simulation process will match the actual performance of the board and ensure manufacturability and reliability of the product the first time and every time thereafter. In addition, they gain a level of confidence in our toolsets and can thereby avoid the time-consuming process of evaluating different toolsets to determine which will best suit their needs.”
Over time, Gauss Synthesis will be further expanded to the level where it will also be offered as a subscription. This would allow companies to regard Gauss Synthesis as a critical aspect of their in-house PCB product development practices.
Results are shared in a PowerPoint or .pdf forms, depending on user preference, and include plots for solder joint failure info, screen captures, spreadsheets with raw data. Broadband extraction is a direct report. We have already done that for a major OEM. Analysis is straightforward, showing potential failure points. For Gauss Synthesis, the results include a follow-up call.
"We want to get to a fully automated process," he added.
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