EDA technology PCB design

Development and Application of EDA Technology in PCB Design

With the marketization of scientific research and technology development, it has become increasingly difficult to complete the design of complex electronic systems in a relatively short period of time using traditional electronic design methods. In order to adapt to this situation, the increasingly perfect EDA technology is gradually replacing the traditional electronic design methods. EDA is currently the latest and most comprehensive electronic design technology and tool. Its appearance provides a new design method for electronic design workers. It covers the main links of electronic design and simulates the designed circuit. And signal integrity analysis, so as to comprehensively verify the circuit design and printed board design, obtain the best design parameters, and conduct product characterization.

1. Introduction to EDA software

"EDA" is Electronic Design Automation (Electronic Design Automation), which is a software tool that can help people design electronic circuits or systems. This tool can make it possible to design more complex circuits and systems. At present, the EDA software that has entered our country and has extensive influence includes: muhisim7, OW_AD, Protel, Viewlogio, Mentor, Synopsys, PCBWId, Cadence, MicmSim, etc. These softwares have their own characteristics and are roughly divided into chip-level design tools and circuit board-level design. tools, programmable logic device development tools, and circuit simulation tools; Among them, Protel is the most popular and widely used software of choice for printed circuit board (PCB) design in China. It is produced by the Australian protdTechnology company. In the past, it was only used To carry out schematic diagram input and PCB layout design, starting from Protel 98, adding analog-digital hybrid circuit simulation module (SIM) and programmable logic device design module (PLD), in 1999 Protel launched a more powerful EDA comprehensive design environment Protel 99, it integrates all the content of EDA into a complete EDA software, so the software has great potential for development, but its most distinctive and powerful functions are still schematic diagram input and PCB layout design; in addition There are also PCB design software supporting Ultiboard and Multisim, PCB production software packages supporting PCBWizard and LivaWire, and so on.

2. The development history of EDA technology

EDA technology is a comprehensive technology involving computer graphics, microelectronics technology and other disciplines. With the development of computer, integrated circuit and electronic system design, it has experienced a process from shallow to deep.

Since the mid-1960s, people have used various computer-aided design tools to replace manual operations for IC layout editing and PCB layout and routing, which has changed the traditional manual method of drawing and designing integrated circuits. Due to PCB layout and routing tools Restricted by the computer working platform, the design work supported by it is limited, and the performance is relatively poor.

In the 1980s, since various design tools (such as schematic diagram input and layout automatic layout) were complete, people used unified data management technology to integrate various tools into a system and provide a standard component library to make design work convenient and fast. However, in the design process, the degree of automation and intelligence is not high, and the interfaces of various EDA software are vastly different, making it difficult to learn and use, and they are incompatible with each other, which directly affects the connection between design links.

Since the 1990s, the level of electronic technology has reached the sub-micron level, and people have begun to pursue the automation of the entire design process, focusing on creative solutions and conceptual ideas, so as to improve design efficiency and shorten product development cycles. . At this time, EDA tools not only have the ability to design electronic systems, but also provide system-level design capabilities independent of processes and manufacturers, and have high-level abstract design concepts.

3.The basic characteristics of EDA technology

Using EDA tools, electronic designers can start designing electronic systems from concepts, algorithms, protocols, etc., and a lot of work can be done by computers, and the entire process of electronic products from circuit design, performance analysis to IC layout or PCB layout design can be done on the computer Completed automatically.

(1) Use the method of software design to design the hardware. The conversion of the hardware system is automatically completed by the relevant development software. The design input can be the schematic diagram V H DL language. Through the test of the software design method, the realization of the hardware circuit with specific functions Design, and the modification of hardware design is as fast and convenient as modifying software programs. The whole process of design hardly involves any hardware, and the operability and product interchangeability are strong.

(2) The software tools of different companies are integrated into a unified computer platform, making it a complete EDA system, realizing the optimal combination and resource sharing among various EDA tools; using a unified database, different design styles and application occasions The requirements of different EDA tools are integrated on the same workstation, thereby standardizing the EDA framework; each simulator performs co-simulation on the same design, which further improves the work efficiency and flexibility of the EDA system.

(3) The EDA design method, also known as the chip-based design method, has a higher degree of integration and can realize on-chip system integration, more complex circuit chip design and application-specific integrated circuit design, so that the product is small in size, low in power consumption, and High reliability; in-system programming or on-site programming is possible, making device programming, reconfiguration, and modification simple and convenient, and online upgrades can be realized; various simulations can be performed, the development cycle is short, the design cost is low, and the design flexibility is high.

(4) EDA technology automatically completes the whole process of electronic products from circuit function simulation, performance analysis, optimization design to result test on the computer according to the design input file, and automatically generates the target system, so that designers do not have to learn many in-depth professional Knowledge can also avoid many derivations and calculations to obtain optimized design results. The degree of design automation is high, which reduces the workload of designers and improves development efficiency.

4. EDA technical design process

EDA technology has excellent functions in various aspects such as product design, product testing and product development. It can help professional and technical personnel to carry out rapid product design and testing, and truly achieve "design is correct".

(1) In terms of design methods, EDA technology has brought fundamental changes to the field of electronic design. It is a future-oriented electronic design concept. Using EDA software, the traditional "circuit design + hardware test + debugging welding" The mode has changed to automatic completion on the computer. People design the schematic model of the electronic circuit in the computer, then verify its theoretical feasibility, and then draw its printed circuit board, so as to complete the transformation from the logical connection of the schematic diagram to the The transformation process of the physical connection of circuit components. Change the traditional cumbersome and lengthy process of sub-product design cycle, which is long, consumes a lot of materials, high design cost, and is not conducive to product replacement, and solves the problem of relying on human factors and facing large-scale electronic circuits when there are problems in the product. question.

(2) In terms of design method, the designer adopts a new high-level "top-down" design method. Firstly, the functional block diagram is divided and structurally designed at the top layer, and then the simulation and error correction are performed at the block diagram level. Use a hardware description language to describe the high-level system behavior, verify it at the system level, and then use synthesis tools to optimize the product. The corresponding physical implementation level can be a printed circuit board or an application-specific integrated circuit; integrated with past selection standards Compared with constructing a new system from the "bottom-up" circuit, the main simulation and debugging process of the design is completed at a high level, which is not only conducive to early detection of structural design errors and avoiding waste of design work, It also reduces the workload of logic function simulation and improves the first-time success rate of design.

(3) In the circuit design process, poor signal integrity is not caused by a certain factor, but by multiple factors in the board-level design. The designer first determines the design plan, selects the appropriate components, and then Design the circuit schematic diagram according to the specific components, and then carry out the first simulation such as fault analysis, AC and DC analysis of the analog circuit, and transient analysis. This time the simulation is mainly to input the design into the EDA tool for simulation, check the correctness of the design plan in terms of function, check the correctness of the logic function; ensure the quality of the signal on the signal line, pay special attention to the high-speed circuit, the used The solution to signal integrity problems caused by excessive chip switching speed, unreasonable layout of connecting components, and unreasonable interconnection of circuits mainly includes crosstalk, reflection, overshoot and undershoot, oscillation, signal delay, etc.

(4) Through the EDA system, most of the design defects can be eliminated in advance, and the data and response waveforms similar to the actual circuit can be simulated on the computer. Designers do not need to describe the circuit through the gate-level schematic diagram, but to describe the function according to the design goal, and get rid of the shackles of the circuit details. Before making the PCB board, they can also perform thermal analysis, noise and interference analysis, electromagnetic compatibility analysis, and reliability analysis. etc., and the parameters of the analyzed results can be reverse marked back to the circuit diagram, and the second simulation can be performed to test the feasibility of the PCB board in the actual working environment; in the process of board making, the computer builds electromagnetic interference and thermal interference into mathematical Models are excluded to maintain routing quality. It can be seen that EDA technology enables designers to fully understand the functional characteristics and physical characteristics of the system before the actual electronic system is produced, thereby eliminating development risks in the design stage, shortening development time, and reducing development costs.

Summarize

The development and application of EDA technology has become the core of modern electronic design. With the acceleration of electronic product updates, EDA technology is the source of electronic product development. Its application level and popularity have become a measure of the modernization level of a country's electronic technology. Therefore, the development of EDA technology will be a major technological revolution in the field of electronic design and the electronics industry. Mastering EDA technology has become an important task for designers of electronic circuits and hardware systems today.

The above are the details of the development and application of EDA technology in PCB design introduced by Shenzhen Zuchuang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. If you have software and hardware function development needs for smart electronic products, you can rest assured to entrust them to us. We have rich experience in customized development of electronic products, and can evaluate the development cycle and IC price as soon as possible, and can also calculate PCBA quotations. We are a number of chip agents at home and abroad: Songhan, Yingguang, Jieli, Ankai, Quanzhi, realtek, with MCU, voice IC, Bluetooth IC and module, wifi module. We have hardware design and software development capabilities. Covering circuit design, PCB design, single-chip microcomputer development, software custom development, APP custom development, WeChat official account development, voice recognition technology, Bluetooth wifi development, etc. It can also undertake the research and development of smart electronic products, the design of household appliances, the development of beauty equipment, the development of Internet of Things applications, the design of smart home solutions, the development of TWS earphones, the development of Bluetooth earphone speakers, the development of children's toys, and the research and development of electronic education products.