Keysight Introduces Signal Integrity Simulation Software for Hardware Engineers
Keysight Technologies has launched the Electrical Performance Scan (EP-Scan), a high-speed digital simulation tool aimed at accelerating signal integrity (SI) analysis for hardware engineers and PCB designers. EP-Scan addresses bottlenecks in PCB design verification, allowing rapid diagnostics and error correction earlier in the design cycle. It automates performance comparisons and generates reports to expedite validation before prototype production. This innovation is expected to reduce PCB board spins and shorten time-to-market, ultimately contributing to more successful designs.
- Launch of EP-Scan enhances productivity for hardware engineers.
- Reduces time-to-market by addressing bottlenecks in design verification.
- Automates performance comparisons, improving efficiency in the validation process.
- None.
- EP-Scan provides electrical performance insights that enable high-speed digital designers to perform quick diagnostics and remove the verification bottleneck
- Identifies layout issues quickly, catches design inconsistencies early, and creates design progress reports effortlessly
- Reduces PCB board spins, shortens time-to-market, and can contribute to more design wins
Keysight’s Electrical Performance Scan (EP-Scan) analyzes different versions of a PCB design quickly and provides signal integrity insights to hardware design engineers. (Photo: Business Wire)
After completing a PCB design, hardware engineers hand the design over to SI specialists to validate its performance before going to prototype. SI specialists perform simulations on a large number of nets, which can take days to weeks to complete. As a result, hardware engineers have difficulty predicting how much analysis time it will take to find errors or performance issues in the design. Uncertainty about the length of the SI analysis phase creates a bottleneck in the design cycle and delays time-to-market.
EP-Scan addresses SI analysis bottlenecks by giving hardware designers diagnostic tools to correct designs earlier and meet development schedules. As a stand-alone software product, EP-Scan performs electromagnetic (EM) simulation on signal nets and reports SI metrics such as channel return and insertion loss. In addition, EP-Scan automates performance comparisons between different versions of a design and generates simulation reports that expedite verification prior to building expensive physical prototypes.
“Our goal with EP-Scan is to ‘shift left’ the PCB design verification process by using early simulation to detect and correct errors, giving hardware designers the confidence to move forward and obtain first pass success,” said
EP-Scan requires only the layout geometry and substrate stack-up information for the PCB design as inputs. After engineers specify the desired nets for investigation, EP-Scan reports simulation results including the characteristic impedance and delay of traces, return loss, insertion loss, and impedance time-domain reflectometry (TDR). By analyzing common fabrication formats such as ODB++, EP-Scan shows engineers the performance of their design as it would be when fabricated. EP-Scan enables hardware engineers to quickly validate designs and identify layout issues before the final verification, which reduces time-to-market, and can contribute to more PCB design wins.
Resources
About
Keysight delivers advanced design and validation solutions that help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world. Keysight’s dedication to speed and precision extends to software-driven insights and analytics that bring tomorrow’s technology products to market faster across the development lifecycle, in design simulation, prototype validation, automated software testing, manufacturing analysis, and network performance optimization and visibility in enterprise, service provider and cloud environments. Our customers span the worldwide communications and industrial ecosystems, aerospace and defense, automotive, energy, semiconductor and general electronics markets. Keysight generated revenues of
Additional information about
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230118005644/en/
+1 303 662 4748
geri_lacombe@keysight.com
+81 42 660-2162
fusako_dohi@keysight.com
Source:
FAQ
What is the purpose of Keysight's Electrical Performance Scan (EP-Scan)?
How does EP-Scan improve the PCB design process?
What benefits does EP-Scan provide to designers?
What market sector does Keysight Technologies operate in?
How much revenue did Keysight Technologies generate in fiscal year 2022?
