Monday, April 7, 2008

Mentor Teams With Agilent On PCB Design Technology

Wilsonville, Oregon-based semiconductor design software marker Mentor Graphics Corp. said this morning that it has teamed with Agilent Technology to jointly develop a new integrated, mixed signal product for designing printed circuit boards. The two said that the new PCB design product allows designers of mixed-signal circuit designers to concurrently design PCBs with Mentor's Expedition Enterprise or BOard Station software alongside Agilent's Advanced Design System EDA software for RF design and simulation. The firms said that the integration will allow for combining RF, analog, and digital design on the same PCB. Traditionally, high speed, RF designs--which are used for cell phone, pager, wireless, satellite, and other high speed communications systems--were implemented separately from digital and mixed signal designs, due to the need for greater simulation and stricter design parameters. The new software is available as an add on option to Mentor's software.