In a buzzing corporate world rife with market competition, companies must adapt to shifting paradigms in design to satisfy consumer appetites for innovation or face potential obsoletion.

While this will depend on utilization of the most current components, processes and technologies, the rules of old in manufacturing have experienced marked changes, meaning companies must also have the means to compete on other factors such as weight, cost and style if they want to stay ahead in the game.

Consider the extended life cycle of the mobile phone – one of the most frequently updated products in the worldwide electronics realm. While its design may have been large and cumbersome, the first handheld cell was built for the sole purpose of making calls, making overall call quality the residing aspect for competition.

A saturated market then called for small-sized, light-weight devices with elevated battery life, before demands for increased functionality such as Wi-Fi-, Bluetooth- and Camera-enabled mobiles turned up the heat in the early days of a connected modern world.

But in the midst of the digital era, products must move far beyond extended functionality. It’s now about both form and function, with features like style and appearance seen as equally important. Think about it: When you last upgraded your device, were you considering call quality or intent on things like cost and size?

And so the line between mechanical design and electronics becomes increasingly blurred, calling for an overhaul of traditional PCB-centered systems for product design. While the current generation of PCB-centric systems do not effectively support product-level considerations beyond PCB routing, next-generation design processes place the product at the heart, encouraging competitive market products defined by crucial factors such as price, weight, performance, function and appearance.

“A multi-disciplinary and collaborative product-centric design process is a profoundly different approach,” says Bob Potock, Vice President of Marketing for design software pioneers, Zuken. “This is being driven by changing competitive factors and a PCB-centric methodology simply can’t keep up. This changing environment requires a more collaborative and responsive design process,” he adds.

“One key product-centric design feature that allows companies to quickly respond to new and complex product requirements is architectural validation,” Potock explains. “This is the bridge between the product requirements and detailed design – and it’s an area where companies can achieve a competitive edge for their products if they get it right.”

Other features that allow manufacturers to reduce total cost and time through product-centered design strategies include:

• Product-based virtual prototyping for architecture validation versus product requirements;
• Block-based design reuse
• 2D/3D multi-board planning and design
• Multi-board ECAD/MCAD 3D co-design
• Chip-package-board co-design
• IP management

Once companies make room for these innovative features in their structures for design, they force multi-domain and product-centric features on the overall creative process, spurring the development of cutting-edge, competitive products that inspire collaboration between multiple design disciplines. As such, it remains crucial for global corporations to employ NextGen software solutions for their processes of design, ensuring their place at the forefront of a vying industry in an everchanging consumer world.

           These 4 trailblazing companies will help your design process soar to brand-new heights…

MENTOR

Mentor, a Siemens Business, offers industry-led software and hardware design solutions that grant organizations the tools needed to produce improved electronic devices much faster and cost-efficiently. Through informed products and solutions that give engineers the power to overcome complex design issues they face within the intricate realms of board and chip design.

Products include:

• Embedded Software – Make optimal use of the latest multi-core and heterogeneous SoCs to deliver reliable safe and secure systems that incorporate rich graphics and connectivity with a customizable Linux® solution, the low power capable Nucleus® RTOS, and a high performance Type 1 Hypervisor.
• Electrical & Wire Harness Design – Capital and VeSys design software help speed the design process, reduce product cost & improve product quality.
• Electronic System Level Design – Vista™ is an integrated TLM 2.0 solution for architectural design exploration, verification, and virtual prototyping.

Click here to view Mentor’s extensive catalogue of EDA products.

ZUKEN

Zuken’s CR-8000 grants business leaders access to the tools needed to optimize design at both the product and PCB design level, promising a platform from which to dominate over CurrentGen competitors. Through visionary features like Multi-site ECAD Library & Data, Design Exploration, 2D/3D Multi-board PCB Design, Advanced Packaging, 3D ECAD/MCAD Convergence, Chip-Package-Board Co-design, Modular Design, Simulation and Analysis, FPGA Pin Optimization and Design for Manufacturing, Zuken’s CR-8000 product family specifically caters for product-centric design on a global scale.

“CR-8000 is the only concept-to-manufacturing, multi-board design solution that has been developed from the start to address the unique requirements of today’s ever-increasing challenges in system-level design optimization,” the company website notes.

“CR-8000’s fully integrated design flow ranges from initial system planning, where critical design decisions are made about design partitioning, component selection, form, fit and function of the product or system; through detailed schematic and PCB design; and optimized manufacturing output.” Read their full profile…

SYNOPSYS

Boasting a long-held tradition of delivering the most leading-edge solutions that target the most intricate process nodes, the company produces some of the most comprehensive and effective FinFET solutions on the market today, formed via a unique partnership with IDMs, foundries and academia.

The majority of the world’s FinFET devices are produced with Synopsys TCAD tools, and the organization now represents the most expansive catalogue of silicon-proven IP for FinFET, with more than 90 percent of the leading volume-production SoCs have been designed with the Galaxy™ Design Platform. Synopsys’ fresh Custom Compiler™ visually-assisted custom layout solution is attuned for rapid implementation, reducing the time usually needed to complete FinFET custom design activities from a few days to a mere number hours.

CADENCE

The 3D-IC Design Solutions from Cadence reduce power and raise performance, while enabling maximum functionality in a much smaller form.

“If your design team is like most,” the company website notes, “there could be digital engineers and analogue/mixed-signal engineers responsible for 3D-IC design. Cadence’s digital design and signoff flow is part of our comprehensive infrastructure for 3D-IC design,” it adds.

“Cadence provides a single source of IP, implementation, test, analysis, and verification products that address the challenges of 3D-IC design for digital SoCs, analog/mixed-signal designs, and entire systems. Many of these tools are integrated and feature a common UI to help enhance your design productivity.”

Key benefits of the products include: heterogeneous integration of separate dies; improved performance; reduced power consumption; and optimum functionality in a smaller form, supporting numerous applications in networking, graphics, mobile communications and networking functions.

*Some of these companies are commercial partners of Tech Wire Asia