Since system design have evolved to the point where digital, analog and RF are on the same PCB for wireless, handheld and telecom industries, semiconductor design and test company Agilent Technologies Inc said it has developed a toolset with semiconductor and printed circuit board (PCB) design software company Mentor Graphics Corp that is expected to cut PCB design cycle times in half as well as improve the quality of mixed-technology designs.

The companies said the toolset is meant to allow PCB mixed-signal designers (RF, analog and digital) to concurrently design a PCB using Mentor's Expedition Enterprise or Board Station XE flows and integrate it with Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS) EDA software for RF design and simulation.

Agilent’s ADS is a high-frequency, high-speed electronic design automation (EDA) software platform that allows design integration to designers of products such as cellular and portable phones, pagers, wireless networks, radar and satellite communications systems, and high-speed digital serial links.

Mentor’s Expedition Enterprise and Board Station XE design flows are aimed at allowing design of advanced PCB systems design technologies in a shorter timeframe, reduced development and product costs, for competitive end-products.

It is typical for engineers to spend three or more months in an eight-month development cycle writing custom code to move RF layouts from ADS to Mentor, noted Tom Gray, spectrum analyzer project engineer with Agilent who is also a Mentor customer. “We also have a dedicated person whose sole role is to accurately move designs from ADS to Mentor. Dynamically linking ADS with Expedition could cut development time by as much as half and provide significant cost savings,” he explained in a statement.

Designing these mixed-technology systems requires tight integration of the physical layout environments and their respective simulation tools to insure optimized performance and short design cycle times, Mentor noted. “While Mentor Graphics is the leader in signal integrity simulation for digital PCBs, a collaboration with Agilent to integrate its RF specialized tools with the Mentor PCB systems design flows will provide our customers with capabilities needed to solve the complex multi-mode system issues they encounter today,” commented Henry Potts, VP and general manager of Mentor’s systems design division, in a statement.

Further, Jim McGillivary, VP and general manager with Agilent’s EEsof EDA division said customers say they face delays in product development due to a disconnect between RF design and simulation and PCB implementation. “We fully expect this new integration to cut our customers' typical product development cycle in half,” he said.

The RF design solution is now available as an option to Mentor's Expedition Enterprise and Board Station XE flows, with prices starting at approximately $9,000, while Agilent's Advanced Design System is available now, with prices starting at approximately $9,000.