Cadence Improves Design for Manufacturability and Design Reuse with Latest Allegro PCB DesignSystem

March 10, 1999

San Jose--March 8, 1999--Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (San Jose) unveiled the latest release ofthe company's Allegro PCB designsystem.

Part of the Intrica family of PCB and ICpackaging design products, the next-generation suite of Allegro designtools offers a number of enhancements, includingdesign-for-manufacturability (DFM) and design-reuse improvements, aswell as free interoperability between Unix and Windows NT. Inaddition, Cadence introduced an enhanced Allegro database viewer withdesign change mark-up capability, available as a standalone tool or anAllegro design system option.

At last fall's PCB Design Conference East, Cadence announced astrategic relationship with Valor Computerized Systems (a platinummember of the Cadence Connections third-party software program)targeted at advancing DFM. In keeping with this DFM focus, Cadence hasincorporated into the new version of the Allegro design systemrelated, design-for-assembly (DFA) features:

• Support for user-written audits--in addition to the DFAaudits supplied by Cadence, users can develop their own DFAaudits to meet their specific needs. A DFA Audits dialog boxhas been added to assist users in developing new DFA auditsor modifying existing ones.

• Test-point parameter audits--the test-point-audit tool hasbeen enhanced to include 16 new parameters, such as testpoint under comp, test point minimum size, test pointtented, pin type, padstack type, test pad, test via, testgrid X, test grid Y, and minimum spacing. These parametersprovide users with comprehensive test point management tohelp pinpoint DFA requirements.

The DFA program also supports many common rules, includingannular ring, component spacing, component orientation, lead span, andhole audits. These capabilities offer customers greater assurance thattheir manufacturing output is correct.

The new release expands the design reuse capabilities of theAllegro design system. In addition to the existing standardcapabilities of replicating circuits within a design and reusingstandard circuits across multiple designs, the tool offers improvedinteraction between the schematic design and PCB design, whileemploying design reuse. New capabilities have been added to Conceptdesign capture to allow users to 'characterize' and 'tag' reusablemodules, and automatically associate them with their PCB layout reusemodules in Allegro.

The new 'place by module' feature allows the schematic to driveplacement of the PCB design. The new features in this release offerproductivity gains by improving on Allegro'scurrent physical design reuse capabilities, as well as providing a truefront-to-back design reuse solution. These new capabilities areavailable free to existing Allegro designer and Allegro expertmaintenance customers.

Allegro PCB design system licenses float freely across Unix andWindows NT. With the newest release of the Allegro suite of products,all maintenance customers will receive the Windows NT/Unix floatinglicenses as part of their upgrade. This will allow current Unix-onlycustomers to adopt Windows NT at no charge, and the floatingcapabilities will provide them with maximum flexibility.

Allegro Free viewer was introduced a year ago to provide aneffective means of communicating design information to all members ofa design team, including engineering, design services, andmanufacturing. Since its introduction, the viewer has been downloadedmore than 2,300 times, and customers have responded extremelypositively, offering suggestions to expand the viewer's capabilities.The resulting enhanced Allegro viewer is a low-cost tool that allowsexpanded capabilities for company-wide access to a design and itsintellectual property (IP) by anyone in the design loop.

The enhanced viewer lets users electronically browse, review,Query, and red-line (via a mark-up layer) a design at any stage of theprocess, as well as return comments to the PCB layout designer, whocan also store the comments with the database. However, because onlythe mark-up layer can be changed, none of the design data can bemodified, protecting the IP from alteration.

Allegro Free viewer, which runs on Microsoft Windows NT only,will continue to be available at no charge through the Web.The new Allegro viewer with enhanced functionality runs on allplatforms Cadence supports, including Windows NT, Sun Solaris, HP-UX,and IBM RS6000. Available now, it costs $2,500 for one copy, withmultiple-copy discounts available.

The upgraded Allegro design system began shipping February 1.Pricing varies, depending on product configuration and options; acomplete Allegro expert design system starts at $25,000 (or $9,995for Allegro studio).

Cadence
San Jose, CA
www.cadence.com

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