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DC Drop Analysis

HyperLynx DC PDN Design and Verification

HyperLynx DC Drop helps designs operate reliably by analyzing multi-board power delivery systems for IR drop, current density and point to point resistance. This ensures adequate power is provided to each component and excessive current densities that could damage the board are avoided.

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DC power integrity

When current flows in power planes and power traces, it creates an IR voltage drop. Although the resistances associated with planes and power vias are small, the voltage drop can be significant, especially with today's high-power IC's. This is especially true when power signals only constitute part of a plane layer, becoming long and thin as a result. The path of current through power planes and vias is often counterintuitive, leading to concentrations of current flow that cause both excessive IR drop and associated heating. This excessive voltage drop can not only cause unreliable component operation, but can potentially damage the board as well.

HyperLynx DC Drop analyzes current flow from the VRM to component power pins, ensuring that adequate voltage is supplied to components and excessive current densities are avoided. It is fast enough to use interactively during PCB layout, so that problems can be detected and corrected early in the design process, when they are easier and faster to correct.

HyperLynx integration and ease of use

Both DC and AC power integrity are supported from the same GUI, so a design can be set up once and analyzed for both DC and AC PDN behavior. HyperLynx Power Integrity (HL-PI) shares the same GUI with HyperLynx Signal Integrity (HL-SI) , so it's easy to switch back and forth between signal and power integrity analysis.

HL-PI can import layout data from a wide variety of CAD formats for analysis. Once the database is imported, analysis wizards guide users through different analysis flows step-by-step, making sophisticated power integrity analysis directly available to mainstream designers, who can perform simulations and make design decisions as part of their normal design cycle.

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Superior speed and capacity

The analysis engine in DC Drop utilizes a unique, highly efficient algorithm that uses less memory and performs analysis much faster than traditional DC PI tools. This means that it can run much larger designs than typically possible and produce results quickly.

HyperLynx DC Drop can be run on a user laptop in most cases, so a server-class computer is only required for the largest designs. It also supports batch-mode verification, so once a collection of different supply runs are set up, an entire system can be verified automatically with a single mouse click.

Unified design and verification analysis flow

HyperLynx DC Drop supports both pre- and post-layout analysis using a unique pre-layout editor that allows users to create and edit power planes, vias and signal topologies in a schematic-driven environment. This is ideal for performing basic PDN planning and experimenting with different scenarios.

The PDN editor can also be used with post-layout verification to extract areas of interest for "what-if" post-layout experimentation, testing potential changes to the layout before sending a design back to layout for modifications.

With a single analysis flow for both pre-layout design planning and post-layout verification, HyperLynx DC Drop makes it easy to compare pre- and post-layout analysis results, so that designers can compare their pre-layout expectations to actual post-layout behavior.

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Easy analysis setup

HyperLynx DC Drop eases the process of setting up analysis by bringing all power supply and component data together in one place. Users define power supply topologies, VRM characteristics and IC current draw, then HyperLynx does the rest. Multi-phase power supplies are supported, along with remote sense pins.

Comprehensive results reporting

HyperLynx DC Drop provides analysis results in both interactive graphical and tabular report formats.

The PowerScope viewer provides both 2D color coded and interactive 3D displays of both voltage drop and current density. Users can pan and zoom the display, view the results in multiple formats and set color scaling to either automatic or manual.

The HTML report summarizes analysis results, reporting everything that was analyzed. It contains hyperlinks that allow problem areas to be displayed directly with the PowerScope viewer. The HyperLynx DC drop report tells you exactly what you want to know most - what passed, what failed and by how much.

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On-Demand webinar

Getting it right - run SI and PI simulations accurately

There’s no point in running SI/PI simulations if the tools you’re using don’t have the accuracy, capacity and performance to do the job in a reasonable timeframe.

This recorded theater presentation shares some of the advanced technology that HyperLynx uses to produce accurate results.

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A diagram showing a power integrity analysis of a DC drop in a circuit, with various components and measurements labeled.

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