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12 The PCB Design Magazine • September 2015 reliability, you would surely appreciate a suite of tools that gives you the ability to take care of all these interrelated demands. Not surpris- ingly, automotive electronics system designers are definitely among those who badly need the means, tools and support to cope with all these developments and many more. In this new fast-changing environment, at a minimum, you would like to be able to design, test and simulate, so that: • All functions perform to expectation • All signals are connected throughout the system • The signal integrity is guaranteed over the entire frequency range • The supply power and grounding comply with all specific component requirements • The electromagnetic interference is kept under control • All boards, when assembled, fit into the case, so that • The entire system ends up fit for purpose by Monica Andrei COnTinenTAL AuTOMOTive SySTeMS Assume you need to design a multipart com- plex product requiring several PCBs to be fitted into a tight housing. Assume also that you have to bring product iterations to market as fast as possible, be it at regular intervals or on demand. Finally, assume that you will have to do this not only faster, but also at an increasingly lower cost. This is a trend that becomes the norm for products in many industries, not least in auto- motive electronics. Specifically, automotive electronics require connecting an increasingly higher number of signals, fitting a multitude of PCBs into a single housing, checking a large number of electric and mechanical parameters and being able to simulate their interaction in the system func- tionality context. With product complexity growing, space availability at a premium and a market that be- comes more demanding in terms of quality and automotive Systems Design: a Support engineer's Perspective feature