Cadence upgrades Allegro and Orcad pcb design tools

Allegro 16.6 is designed to accelerate timing closure for high speed interfaces by 30 to 50%, through timing aware physical implementation and verification delivered in a CAD team collaboration environment for pcb design using Microsoft SharePoint technology. "We improved TeamDesign in r16.5 by managing the process in a shared network drive," said Shah. "SharePoint improves on this by enabling users to check in and check out blocks, providing more flexibility." Additional features include the Auto-interactive Delay Tune function (AIDT), which adjusts timing automatically to meet design constraints. "PCB designers tend to connect point to point first, then go signal by signal. It's a manual and tedious process. AIDT can reduce a two hour manual task to less than 10minutes; it's a huge improvement," Shah commented. Meanwhile, Josh Moore, product marketing director for Orcad, said the same development goals had been applied. "Orcad users are more interested in productivity and efficiency. We've spent a lot of time enhancing algorithms and optimising. Simulations take advantage of this and go faster. On average, there's a 20% reduction in simulation time and up to 65% in some cases."