Software Hunts Sources Of Board-Level Crosstalk May 1999 Issue Published Date: May 01, 1999
The increasingly difficult challenges associated with signal integrity and crosstalk are addressed by BoardSim Crosstalk, a post-layout crosstalk analysis option for the firm's BoardSim design verification tool for interactive and batch-mode analysis. With IC switching speeds rising, board layouts become denser and create signal-integrity nightmares for designers faced with strict time and cost constraints. BoardSim Crosstalk uses a fully integrated electromagnetic field solver to enable powerful crosstalk analysis of an entire high-speed pc board before it is fabricated. Users are spared unnecessary board revisions to save prototyping time and costs. The tool automatically searches the board and builds models for regions where crosstalk coupling between traces can exceed user-defined limits. It uses a fast, integrated 2D boundary element field solver for automatic extraction and caching of coupling parameters. The software also supports multiple aggressor nets, allowing analysis of multi-level or cascaded crosstalk. The Windows-based BoardSim Crosstalk software is scheduled to debut in the second quarter.
