Cadence Design Systems Inc., a leader in global electronic-design innovation, today announced the addition of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) RF (Radio Frequency) technology and design methodology to the Cadence® Allegro® PCB Design XL and GXL offerings. These additional capabilities address the key challenges customers are facing when designing PCBs with high frequency and wireless design requirements.


On today’s designs, it is more likely than ever that mixed technologies such as analog, digital and RF share the same PCB. Because tiny variations of the RF layout have a major impact on circuit performance, manual design techniques and workarounds are required to address RF-specific design challenges. Unfortunately, manual techniques are slow and prone to error. Such challenges abound in a variety of PCB markets, including consumer electronics, communications and wireless applications.

“Capturing RF design intent has been a challenge for us for many years,” said Dave Elders, PCB design manager, Tait Electronics. “The new RF technology in the Allegro PCB Design will enable our RF designers to iterate less often and to complete the design with more confidence.”

The suite of RF-aware capabilities, now available in Allegro PCB Design, include intelligent layout for parametrically creating and editing RF geometries, a flexible shape editor and data-aware bi-directional IFF interfaces. Through bi-directional interfaces, RF circuits can be simulated and validated for signal quality and performance. The entire set of functionalities is vital to the successful physical design and implementation of RF circuits.

“The integration of RF devices on PCBs is creating serious high frequency and wireless design challenges for our customers,” said Charlie Giorgetti, corporate vice president, Product Marketing, Cadence. “This new PCB RF design technology and methodology is another key enhancement in the Allegro PCB design flow that enables our customers to speed more reliable designs to market.”

The new PCB RF technology and design methodology will be available as an add-on option for Allegro PCB Design HDL XL and Allegro PCB Design HDL GXL offerings in the Allegro system interconnect design platform 16.0 release scheduled for customer shipment in June 2007.