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32 The PCB Design Magazine • February 2016 by Andy Shaughnessy I-ConneCT007 Cadence Design Systems has released a va- riety of PCB design tools lately, and we wanted to find out a little more about what's new at Cadence. I tracked down Product Marketing Director Brad Griffin and asked him to discuss some of the newest technology coming out of Cadence. Andy Shaughnessy: Tell us about some of the new PCB design tools at Cadence Design Systems. Brad Griffin: We recently launched a product called OrCAD Sigrity ERC. ERC is an acronym for electrical rule checks. This product repre- sents one of several ways where we have taken advanced Sigrity technology and scaled it to a usable model for folks that are not experts in Signal and Power Integrity. As an example, a PCB designer, without any models or expe- rience with signal integrity tools, is able to screen his design for impedance discontinui- ties and high levels of crosstalk. This is partic- ularly valuable on dense designs where routed traces may accidentally get pushed over voids or gaps between power or ground shapes on adjacent layers. Instead of having the signal integrity engineer send the board back for changes, the PCB designer catches the prob- lems on his own and leaves the SI guy to focus on the tough stuff. Shaughnessy: What new technologies are you ex- cited about? Griffin: I am particularly excited about how our analysis tool product line is enabling a broad range of design expertise in a streamlined fash- ion. Everyone knew when we acquired Sigrity in 2012 that we were getting some of the indus- try's most powerful signal and power integrity tools. Being able to segment that technology for our customer base—from the mainstream PCB designers in the OrCAD space to those creat- ing bleeding-edge designs at some of the largest companies in the world using Allegro—is ex- tremely satisfying. When I meet with customers and hear their ideas of how we can continue feature interview with Brad griffin ...at Cadence Design Systems