MAY 2022 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 39
David Wiens is Xpedition
product manager for Siemens
Digital Industries Software.
To read past columns or
contact Wiens, click here.
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Industries Software:
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Siemens' free, 12-part, on-demand webinar
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RealTime With ... Siemens and Computrol:
Achieving Operational Excellence in Electronics
Manufacturing
optimization. If you co-design the PCB, pack-
age, and die, pre-optimization enables ideal,
easy-to-implement routing. Co-design pro-
vides design flexibility in all three domains, as
the design of the target PCB, package, and die
pads all begin at the same time.
System-level optimization isn't just about
simplifying the life of the poor PCB engineer,
who is oen on the receiving end of a complex
new 2.5/3D IC. A streamlined co-design meth-
odology that seamlessly interchanges digital
twins of ICs, packages and boards optimizes
collaboration and minimizes rework. Attack-
ing the full system problem at one time, rather
than in discrete and serial chunks, enables per-
formance optimization and cost reduction at
each substrate level. DESIGN007
By Nitin Bhagwath, Cadence
In an ideal world, when develop-
ing a printed circuit board (PCB) for
an electronic product, decisions
made during the design process
should drive the bill of materials
(BOM). We may think of this as an
example of "the dog wagging the
tail." In the real world, however,
there has always been some small
amount of the BOM driving the
design, which we may think of as
"the tail wagging the dog." A clas-
sic example of this is when an engineer's calcula-
tions indicate the need for a resistor of 123 kΩ—a
40-cent part—while a 120 kΩ resistor—available
for only 4 cents—will provide an almost identical
response.
Current realities have made such BOM-driving-
the-design decisions more inescapable to ensure
product manufacturability. Everyone around the
globe—from small companies to mega-enterprises
with trillion-dollar valuations, all the way to the U.S.
government—is currently facing unprecedented
supply chain challenges. Supply chain optimization
has long been under pressure,
involving as it does a sophis-
ticated balance of low cost,
future availability, and product
needs. While it's true that dif-
ficulty obtaining all the compo-
nents that are perfect for the
task at hand is not totally unprec-
edented, alternative parts used
to be plentiful. This meant that,
even if you couldn't get exactly
what you wanted, you could get
something similar. But with sup-
ply chain disruptions around the
globe, even next-best parts are hard to find, mak-
ing it critical to ensure component availability for
the design.
One part of the solution is for everyone in the
organization to have visibility with respect to stock
levels. It's important for this visibility to commence
at the earliest stages of the design while the engi-
neers are working on the initial high-level block
diagram, thereby allowing for the design architec-
ture to accommodate parts that can actually be
sourced.
To read the entire column, click here.
COLUMN EXCERPT: All Systems Go!
Supply Chain Woes: Which Comes First, the Design or the BOM?
