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30 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2023 cycle tasks, priorities and focus change, but one critical rule of thumb is that the earlier prob- lems are uncovered and corrected, the better. Electronic product development has tra- ditionally embraced a workflow in which the detailed simulation, analysis, and optimization takes place at a very late stage in the design process, oen as the final step of verification and signoff. However, this delay inevitably leads to costly issues that derail budgets and delay time to market. Defects in requirements and performance are uncovered that require additional cycles to address these issues, which could have been discovered and mitigated ear- lier in the design phase. To succeed in today's highly competitive electronics markets, simulation and analysis are now being integrated from the earliest stages of the design process using an in-design analysis (IDA) methodology, where analysis and veri- fication are moved from an aerthought in the workflow to an integral part of each phase of the design process at the chip, package, board, and complete system level. Figure 2 provides an example of IDA in the Allegro PCB Designer layout environment integrated with the Sigrity Aurora PCB analysis soware. e design team is an important factor in the process. Early in the design, SI engineers are oen brought in to help with understand- ing design constraints and other issues related to SI. During the layout phase, a layout design expert will provide input. During the final lay- out verification phase, the SI engineer will be involved. Depending on the organization and time schedules, the SI expert may not be readily available, but the PCB designer is still respon- sible for delivering the design on schedule and working properly. erefore, it is desirable for the PCB designer to be able to perform gen- eral SI/PI simulation independently of the SI/ PI simulation experts. Embedding simulation workflows directly in the PCB design environ- ment empowers the designer and helps ensure the design is correct and will be delivered on time. Quick answers to general SI/PI issues such as crosstalk and impedance matching are oen needed early in the design. Later, the detailed accuracy of the simulation is important, but in the beginning, designers usually just need to make sure they are on the right track. Simula- tion accuracy can oen be at odds with simu- lation speed, requiring the engineer to make tradeoffs. If detailed accuracy is important at the start, the designer could reduce the scope of the work and consider just one piece of the design. In the event that the entire design must have an accurate simulation early on, analysis workflows can utilize sophisticated distributed computing that enables designers to achieve both speed and accuracy. Figure 2: Cadence in-design analysis workflows.