January 29, 2014. At DesignCon, Altium, a global provider of design automation and embedded software development tools, teamed up with Nimbic, a provider of electromagnetic simulation solutions for signal integrity, power integrity, and EMI analysis, to announce a new development partnership. Nimbic becomes the newest developer partner to join Altium’s newly formed Altium Developer program. The agreement consists of a strategic alliance between the two companies and the introduction of a new power integrity solution called Altium PI-DC.
Altium PI-DC gives users the ability to validate DC voltage and current performance in their designs before prototype and production. Now, designers can avoid issues with power delivery and are better able to identify potential failure points—such as high via currents that could cause fusing or high resistance neck-down regions resulting in excessive voltage drop.
Built from the ground-up, Altium PI-DC is based on Nimbic’s specialized 3-D full-wave electromagnetic solver and is designed to address the requirements of large-scale power-integrity problems.
“Nimbic views this relationship with Altium as a significant opportunity to expand our market presence,” said Bala Vishwanath, chief marketing officer of Nimbic. “With Altium’s PCB knowledge and Nimbic’s electromagnetic-simulation expertise, we have the ability to raise the bar and introduce solutions that are no longer cost-prohibitive, allowing companies not only to increase productivity, but also design for reliability.”
Altium PI-DC integrates into Altium Designer as an optional extension, giving engineers a seamless environment for DC analysis. Nets for analysis are selected in Altium Designer with DC voltage-drop and current-density results displayed directly over the layout, allowing a designer to interactively identify and fix issues with no guess work about what layout structure might be causing the issue.
“BGAs have hundreds of power and ground pins with numerous supply rails requiring complex networks of capacitors to manage 'pure' power. The sophistication of the PDN (power distribution network) requires engineers to be able to effectively analyze and make corrections early on in the design process,” said Daniel Fernsebner, director of technical partnerships for Altium. “This partnership with Nimbic introduces a robust integrated power integrity solution to our customers.”
Altium PI-DC will be released later this quarter and is being presented at DesignCon 2014 in Santa Clara. Attendees are encouraged to stop the Altium booth #516 for a first hand demonstration.