This paper will enumerate the benefits of a platform-based system design approach. The original electronic design process built by linking tools together has remained largely unchanged for decades. Companies doing electronics design continue to design products by cobbling together a collection of tools to create what is commonly referred to as the “tool-chain”. Many of these tools are not even from the same vendor because building or acquiring so-called best-in-class tools by acquisition was the strategy of the day.
A tool-chain centric approach does not address the needs of today’s companies which must build (and want to build) more complicated products that require multi-domain expertise spread among dispersed design teams. Companies are also being forced to implement multiple tool-chains for PCB, FPGA and embedded software development. This new generation of product development is elevating the importance of data management and process over so-called best-in-class tools.
And so the question becomes this: can a tool-centric approach alone add the productivity improvements necessary for product development companies to compete on the worldwide stage.
The alternative is a layered platform architecture that unifies PCB, FPGA and embedded software development into one application and offers powerful data management capabilities and ease of use. At the foundation is a unified data model with an adjacent data management layer to enable numerous data management benefits including versioning and ECO management. Powerful data management capabilities including difference visualization between two schematic or PCB versions improves overall data integrity within the design process. Another benefit is a unified project view that contains FPGA, PCB and embedded software design files. Team collaboration and concurrency are achieved by all team members working through the project view.
The tool layer spans PCB, FPGA and embedded software design all supported by a single data model. Tools are now views into the unified data model. Contrast this to the tool-chain model where each tool has its own storage database – 10 tools with 10 different storage representations. The PCB tool can easily be extended to support both 2D and 3D by enhancing the data model. 3D STEP models are now easily exchanged with the MCAD tools for clearance checking.
The IP layer is next and provides IP for FPGA and software development. Included is a library of common peripheral cores (e.g. Ethernet, USB, PS/2, etc) that can be used to quickly expand design functionality. Once the peripherals on designed into the FPGA, the software platform builder creates the software stack for each peripheral to allow you to focus on your product differentiating coding efforts and not device driver development.
The platform based solution builds a data management foundation without compromising tools performance. Ease of use improves because the solution has a common data foundation and is one executable. Engineers can now focus on product differentiation and not solving tool-chain headaches. Altium has developed a platform based design solution called Altium Designer. Companies switching to a platform based design process are doubling their productivity as compared to traditional tool-chains.
Author: Bob Potock, Altium North America
Bob Potock is the Director of Technical Marketing for Altium North America and has been involved in board-based system and FPGA design throughout most of his career. He has held positions in software/hardware engineering, marketing and field operations at companies that include Mentor Graphics, AT&T Bell Labs, Intel, Burroughs, Cadnetix and NeoCAD. Bob holds a BSEE from Case Western Reserve University and an MBA from Regis University. He joined Altium in 2009.
