Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Design News

Design News

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Design News; Published: 07 April 2008

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Design News; Published: 07 April 2008

CARLSBAD, CA – Altium has donated licenses of its Altium Designer integrated EDA software to FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) for use in its annual robotics design competition.

1,500 teams of high school students participating in the 2008 FIRST Robotics Competition have received access to Altium Designer EDA tool, the first electronics design software ever provided to the competition. At the FIRST Championship to be held April 17-19 in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, robots created by the teams from a standard kit of parts will compete in a series of matches to determine the world’s best robot.

Gerry Gaffney, Altium Senior VP said, “It’s great to be able to offer these young designers… an insight into the future of electronics design."

"We thank Altium for its commitment to young engineers, and consider the company a valued new member of the FIRST community.” said FIRST president, Paul R. Gudonis.

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Design News; Published: 31 March 2008

MULINO, OR – Sunstone Circuits launches the Sunstone ECOsystem Design Environment, a one-stop resource know-how, capabilities and expertise needed to produce a PCB. The Sunstone ECOsystem eliminates barriers to the successful PCB prototype design, manufacture and assembly process, enabling DfM and DfA methodologies and providing partners with a collaborative environment that the PCB designer, vendor and supplier can work in.

“Sunstone strives to be at the forefront of innovation and creativity in the PCB industry in order to remain the easiest PCB solutions provider to do business with,” said Terry Heilman, CEO of Sunstone Circuits. “We’ve spent the last year bringing the Sunstone ECOsystem to life. This industry-leading resource is one more step in our commitment to support designers from the time their project is conceived up until it is completed, from quote to delivery.”

The Sunstone ECOsystem helps prototype and quickturn PCB designers find the knowledge, vendors, tools and libraries needed to design projects and scale up to production with Sunstone’s manufacturing capabilities and partner fabrication and assembly services. See Sunstone Circuits at the IPC Printed Circuit Expo / APEX show in Las Vegas, April 1-3, 2008 at Booth # 2017 to learn more about the ECOsystem Design Environment.

Details: Written by Staff; Category: Design News; Published: 31 March 2008

SAN FRANCISCO - Ansys plans to enter into the EDA software market by acquiring Ansoft for $832 million ($32.50 per share) in a cash-and-stock deal. Ansys shares were down 10.1% and Ansoft shares were up 11% on the news. The deal is expected to close by the end of June.

DES PLAINES, IL - PCB Libraries has changed its name. The company has said it will begin offering new tools beyond the scope of CAD libraries, and has adopted the name PCB Matrix Corporation.

The company’s new tools will reportedly help automate PCB design related tasks, by introducing software tools such as the Symbol Modeler, an automated schematic symbol generator, Board Planner to assist in part placement, and Constraint Rule Editor used to define signal routing rules.

"We wanted to maintain the high reputation we established and meet growing customer needs," said Tom Hausherr, CEO, "so we decided to keep a part of our logo. ‘PCB Matrix’ will soon release a major upgrade to the IPC-7351 LP Suite. The new LP Calculator will include support for IPC-7251 through-hole technology and…include inch and mil units.”

SANTA CLARA, CA - Agilent Technologies Inc. has announced that Finisar has selected Agilent’s Advanced Design System (ADS) software for the development of optics products designed for the telecom market. The ADS software platform includes the Signal Integrity Design Suite and the Ptolemy system simulator.

Finisar manufactures fiber optic components and subsystems utilizing company patented lasers to enable telecommunications equipment manufacturers to provide claimed longer reach optical transmission, at lower cost with better performance and less complexity.

“We are excited that Finisar has selected our ADS software platform for the design of their high-performance telecom optics products,” said Sanjeev Gupta of Agilent. The signal integrity design and simulation capabilities within ADS…will be a huge help in getting our customers’ products to market more quickly.”

Agilent’s ADS EDA software platform incorporates new signal integrity capabilities, including the addition of serializer/deserializer(SERDES)/Verilog analog mixed-signal co-simulation, and the company’s Ptolemy Simulator, which is based on a hybrid of synchronous and timed synchronous dataflow technologies. It reportedly simplifies the design and simulation of digital (DSP), analog, and mixed-signal based RF systems and circuits.

“We… chose Agilent’s EDA software because of its impressive simulation technology and flexible design environment,” said Kevin McCallion, director of engineering at Finisar.