Utiliser les solutions de CAO pour obtenir des systèmes électroniques fiables

L'électronique est dans tout. Les technologies ont évolué et l'électronique fait désormais partie intégrante de nos vies et a bouleversé des secteurs industriels entiers.

La croissance mondiale des systèmes électroniques touche tous les domaines, tels que la conduite autonome et ses infrastructures, l'électrification des véhicules, les appareils intelligents, les usines intelligentes, les villes intelligentes et de nombreux autres secteurs verticaux. Cela crée des défis considérables pour les fabricants de systèmes qui doivent concevoir des produits de qualité avec une très grande fiabilité.

Concevoir un système électronique fiable est essentiel pour tout produit électronique. 

La chaleur, les vibrations, les interférences électromagnétiques et les problèmes de fabrication du système électronique sont quelques-uns des défis qui peuvent entraîner une défaillance de celui-ci sur le terrain.

Dans la conception électronique, le prototypage virtuel est généralement associé à la simulation fonctionnelle. Toutefois, ce prototypage a beaucoup plus à offrir, qu'il s'agisse de minimiser les prototypes physiques, de réduire les défauts ou le délai de mise sur le marché.

J'expliquerai comment les ingénieurs et les concepteurs peuvent tirer parti des capacités des solutions CAO électronique pour créer un circuit imprimé fiable et robuste.

Je m'intéresserai tout particulièrement au volet électrique, à la conception du circuit imprimé et à sa fabrication en utilisant le processus de vérification des conceptions de circuits imprimés.

Principaux points abordés :

• Les avantages de la conception assistée par la simulation

• L'importance des tests virtuels

• Les outils de simulation

• Relever les défis grandissants que pose la conception de systèmes électroniques

• Solutions intégrées entre Altium et Altair

Ressources complémentaires :

• Retrouvez Sarmad Khemmoro sur LinkedIn
• La simulation SPICE facilement dans Altium Designer | Simulation pour la conception électronique (en anglais)
• La simulation comme outil essential - Steve Sandler - AltiumLive 2020 (en anglais)
• Simuler une conception de circuits imprimés

Transcription (en anglais)

Sarmad Khemmoro:

Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to AltiumLive 2022 Connect conference. My name is Sarmad Khemmoro. I'm the vice president of business development for electronic system design from Altair. In today's presentation, I'll be talking about how to ensure electronic system design reliability, and how the EDA industry addressing it. Companies like Altair and Altium, how they're working together to address the challenges of electronic system design reliability. Let's get us started.

We are living in the digital age now and digitalization changing everything in our life. We're all experiencing this today. The way we design things, the way we manufacture things, the way we use things, the way we communicate with people, interact with people, everything became affected by digital age. The center of this digital revolution and digital age is electronics and electronic systems. We are here in this conference because we are all involved in this electronics... electronic system designs.

We are involved in the digital revolution. The next few slide, I'll be talking about the industry trends, study about industries, what's going on with the electronic systems and what kind of challenges we are seeing and how we are addressing it. Electronics is one of the fastest growing markets. It's actually affecting many, many industries. If you look at the aerospace in defense consumers, medical, automotive, these are four industries experiencing growth due to electronic content in the products.

I'll have some stats to share with you about some of these industries. For example, the global consumer electronic market is expected to grow by over 7% year over year to achieve $1.5 trillion by 2026. If I move to other industry or more industries, vehicle electronics will reach more than 50% of the car content or car value by 2030. Another example of an industry maybe close to us in this conference. We contact manufacturing people involved in developing a manufacturing circle board, PCBs. This industry are expected to grow at 9.5%, 9.4% year over year to achieve $730 billion by 2027. That's a huge market. These are public information.

You can look at it from the research firm. You see these stats for the industries, other industries like industrial, building technologies, transportation, heavy equipment, they all are experiencing the same growth due to electronic content in the product. Electronics, it's happening at different levels. Let's look at the levels. Electronics happening at the chip level. I see design level. I see PCBs, which is the area we are involved with here, we're talking about in this conference. Subsystems, also an area electronic involved. System level, where you have, could be the car could be the plane could be the big rack, a box that have multiple subsystems. The last level electronic also exist system of system level where you have, for example, car to car communication, car to infrastructure, maybe satellite to base.

These are different levels. Each level has its own challenges and has own requirement and its own issues. Its own trends. There's a need to have integration between these levels. There's a need to have interaction between these levels, between all these levels. This picture I'm showing you here from a chip to system, there's a terminology or there is term that is used in the industry now called chip to city. You may have that term before. Electronic exists from the chip all the way to city right now. Now let's talk about two items on this picture right now, the PCB and the subsystem. This is what consists electronic system design.

The next couple of slides, I'll talk about the trends and challenges affecting the PCB and the subsystem, electronic systems designs. We're not going to be touching on the chip. We're not going to be touching on the system and subsystem. Look at the electronic system trends. What's going on. Electronic systems, which surely consists... Could be a PCB, multi PCB in enclosure, they're getting more complicated. Customers, our customer, your customers, most likely asking for more functions and features. The design getting smaller. The packages of the component getting smaller and getting more complicated, more layers, more dense. A lot of advancement in technologies, a lot of new protocols, new maybe challenges in manufacturing.

Getting complicated every day. Another trend we see because of the complexity of the system is a growing cost and the growing timeline. Of course our customers always asking us to have the product faster. If you're designing a console, game console or cell phone companies like to get them out before the holidays so they can capture market share. There's a challenge and there's a trend to get it designed faster, getting the product faster. Of course, it put a lot of pressure on companies to... on timeline and cost. There need to be some trade off between getting it faster, cheaper, and better. Of course you need to have a high quality also. You need to have a reliable product.

Another trend we see it's a compliance mandates. Many industries now have this own internal mandate, their own compliance mandate. For example, if you are in the automotive industry, if you're designing any control unit that maybe goes in the car for autonomous drive, or maybe EV, it may have something called ISO 26262. It's a functional safety requirement. If you're developing a medical device, it may have its own medical industry requirement. If you're developing industrial equipment electronics, it has its own requirement. If you're developing electronic board that goes maybe in a satellite or in the plane, that has its requirement.

For a flying electronics, there's something called the DO-254, which is a flying electronics requirement. Of course companies developing electronics, they have to certify their designs, certify their product according to this requirement. There's a challenge, as the trade-off have to happen between cost and for the risk. Now let's jump into electronic systems challenges. I looked at the trends, let's look at challenges. Electronic system from its name is not electronic by itself. It's a system consist of multiple discipline, multiple domains. There's electronic domains, mechanical domains, software domain, and electrical domain.

These are... Need to talk to each other, need to interact with each other. Each domain has its own requirement, has its own challenges. Integration of electronics, chip, package, PCB into the mechanical to the software traditionally very challenges. A lot of issues. Most likely they're siloed. The teams that are working in these domains are siloed. There's a need to have integrated system. There's need to have integrated systems simulation. These domains to talk to each other more often. The lack of integration and collaboration between these domains can lead to longer design cycle, late process testing.

Also, can lead to long... more cost, increased cost, development and product cost, and also decrease quality. Of course, increasing time to market. These are challenges for people developing the systems. Let's look at the challenges from people standpoint. Look at the evolution of people involved in designing electronic system and the challenges. Back in the eighties, designing a PCB or designing electronic system maybe can be done by maybe two or three people.

You have a double E, you have the layout engineers or drafter, you may have manufacturing engineers, or maybe a mechanical person. Sometimes maybe the layout engineers acting as a mechanical engineer. In the nineties, more people got involved maybe with the production of PGAs. Now you have the maybe signal behavior after study. You have the signal, integrity engineers. You have a complicated component library. You have to have librarian person involved. Now you have more people getting involved in the designing electronic systems and the challenge now to have all these people talking to each other seamlessly.

Fast forward to 2000 and beyond, now we have more people involved in electronic system. I'm showing you some example of few of the people, the mechanical person, the software engineers, the wiring engineers, the quality engineers, thermal engineers. There's also, non-engineering people get involved in the design, believe it or not. The procurement, purchasing. Sometimes sales people in the company they may actually get involved and give you a requirement, marketing people get involved. They give you feedback.

The challenge is to have all these people talking to each other, the challenge to have all the domain connected. Other challenge we see right now, companies can't afford to have a specialist. Can't afford to have thermal engineers on the staff, or EMC engineers on the staff. They would like to have their electrical engineers or maybe their PCB designers or the system engineers are doing some of this analysis, some of these checks, validation and tests themselves. They're looking for help by providing a solution to them. Not a specialist solution.

You need to have a solution to be used by the... We call it, maybe the average engineers or the average designer that somebody's only doing layout or doing schematic, be able to do maybe some of the testing himself using some applications, some tools. Now let's look at the technical challenges of the electronic system design or PCB in this case. Most of you guys may be are familiar with this. I don't have to repeat it, but you can see, of course, the density of the design, the intense, mechanic enclosure, the speed of the signal, the component technology's been used, the thermal effect, the environmental conditions, the collaboration, exploration, material technology, what material you used in the PCB stackup for example, what material used on the enclosure, is it plastic or is it metal?

Manufacturablity. Can I manufacture my design in-house? Can I also... To maybe contract manufacturing, let's say Mexico or China. That manufacturing partner have the ability to build and assemble my board. Of course, the cost and schedule is always important. If you are a high volume company, developing... manufacturing, a lot of your product, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands costing schedule will be very, very huge to you. Also depend with the industry. If you're aerospace and you may have different requirements or different challenges than automotive. Maybe have different challenges than medical.

These are some of the common across the maybe PCB industry. You may see different ones in your specific industry. Of course, most of us involving developing electronic system, we like to have our system reliable. The cost of a reliable system can cost two failures. Now let's look at the why system fails. Why electronic system fails. They can fail due to different factors. Design factors. Could be component used. It could be EMI interference. Could be signal and power. Could be thermal. Could be the packaging of the design.

The component packaging they used. Could be environmental factors, excessive heat, humidity, moisture, collaboration, stress, bending, aging. All environmental could be factors. Another ones, another factors, manufacturing factors could be the assembly fault, fabrications, solder fatigue issues that can cause electronic system to fail. What companies developing electronic system doing typically, they try to test in the lab. They try test in the chamber. They try to test in the field. Most of us try to do that. As I mentioned, companies rely on prototype and physical testing. But reliability problem does not show up as a quality issue manufacturing during the product design... during product manufacturing.

A system can pass manufacturing, but it still fail in the field due some stress. Also you cannot test component and PCB assembly aging in the lab. It's hard to do that. Creating a prototype and testing does not always work. You may be able to test a prototype for some acceptable error, maybe some acceptable failure rate, but not for everything. It's also hard to simulate a test, or maybe simulate year of stress in test chambers. An example, if you are developing an electronic unit that goes in the car, or maybe in the plane that the product have a longer life cycle. It can take you years to do field testing for that product to achieve reliable product.

You may have to drive the car, maybe millions of miles to get all the test scenarios, to see if your system will be failing or not. More prototype, the more testing will increase your time to market, will increase your cost. Companies have issues with reliability. A lot of companies get affected by not reliable product. An example.... The cost of not reliable product, here's some example for three companies, one of them actually, or two of them actually consumer electronics. One is a medical here. Or actually they have major recall due to unreliable product, maybe due to heat, due to some electronic issues, could be some... due to some mechanical issues on the design.

What's companies looking for? What are they looking to do? What's the answer to this? What's the answer to achieve a reliable and robust electronic system design. The answer is adopting what we call a digital twin. A digital model of your design. Digital twin that, in the context of electronic system design is the virtualization of the development and design process. Taking your lab testing, field testing, shifting it left. Do more simulation upfront. Do more analysis and verification on a front digitally.

Developing a model of your board, of your design. Work on it digitally before creating any prototype. We call this an electronic system design. We call it simulation driven design. The answer to achieving a robust electronic system design is adapting a simulation driven design process. What does that mean? What's the solutions driven design process? It's a solution can predict reliability issues to help avoid design practices that can cause failures, really ability to simulate months and years that you can do in chambers, do it now virtually. Predicting failures, product failures in hours, improving the design quality by integrating verification throughout the design, not at the end of the design.

Finding the problem only by automating best practices. One of the most important thing of the solution, of doing solutions driven design, offloading domain specialists by moving some of the first order checks on verification to the design engineering team. For example, if you are a thermal... you have a thermal engineering staff or EMC engineering staff, that person will be very, very busy. It can take... It can offload some of this tasks into PCB designers and doubly by adopt thing, machine driven process. Here's some examples of this PCB design virtual prototyping, we call it the simulation driven design applications or needs.

Signal integrity is one of them. Power integrity, electrical checking, thermal management, thermal simulation, collaboration and chart analysis. Of course, DFM and DFA. Design for manufacturability, design for assembly validation. These are some examples of submission driven design processing that apply to electronic system design. The next few slide, I'll talk about solutions. What does companies like Altair provide in the area of simulation driven design for electronic system design. Quick history on Alta. Alta has been in industry for over 35 years as a mechanical simulation and analysis company. Started in 1985.

In the last few years, last maybe seven, eight years, we've been heavily involved in the area of electronic system design, simulation and verification. As you see from this slide, we have different element that apply to electronic system design. It starts from electronics, a pure electronic. This is a PCB area, where we have a solution that covers PCB design review, verification, analysis and manufacturing. The solution called ProllEx will be covering this in more detail in next slide. But also one of my colleagues, Harry Kennedy, he'll be presenting more detail on the solution with demos. And also he'll be talking about the integration with Altium. How the solution work with Altium designer flow.

The second part or the second limit of the solution is the electrical, where actually we can simulate and optimize wireless networks, electric connectivity. We can do EMC, EMI system level analysis and simulation. We can do antenna design and placement, part of electrical systems. Part of also electrical system design solution we have mechanical and thermal system level analysis for the PCB or the enclosure or the subsystem. Or actually we can simulate in one environment, mechanical structures on the PCB vibration, acceleration, solid fatigue, electronic cooling. It's all in one environment moving to the right. And then mechatronics.

We have an environment called the Flux that is allowed to do motor design, mechatronic design, and simulation that also can connect to other solutions we have. Also can connect to other solutions from partners. The other part of the solution is the circuit simulation. This is spice level circuit simulation that's actually integrated in some of our solution in electronic and electrical, but also exist as a standalone simulation tools. Last but not least is the code generation as part of our electronic system design. We have a tools that allow create visual representation of your code that actually can go to program a microcontroller that goes in a PCB. We'll talk about that in more detail.

Our solution supported by an HPC platform and also a cloud solution, cloud accessibility. Let me cover some of these solution in more detail. Hopefully give you a flavor of what we offer from Altair to address electronic system design challenges. The first part of the electronic system design solution is the electronic part, which is I'm referring to electronic PCB design or PCB itself. As I mentioned before, designing PCB require multiple people with different discipline involved in the design.

You have electrical engineer, the PCB designer, mechanical engineer, manufacturing engineer. You may have EMC expert. Of course you may have the management team. This all involved in the process, maybe in the design process, but also involved in the review process. They all need to collaborate. Having a solution that integrated with the current eco flow is very essential for these guys to work together. In this case, a solution that I'm showing here can help users do that. Another area when designing PCB, you have to manufacture it. Taking the board, sending the data to your fab house to fabricate the board.

Typical fab house, they will have set of rules. They need to check the board again to make sure the board that can be fabricated. These rules typically they vary from customer to customer. They vary from industry to industry. For example, if I'm a automotive customer, I may have different requirements for my PCBs than consumer electronic customers. If I can do these checking only the design cycle, done by the PCB designer or sometime by the engineers, it will reduce the time I have to spend in testing in the manufacturing phase.

It will make sure I can send a data to my manufacturing with less error in. I can fabricate the board faster. I can reduce the amount of expense. I can reduce the amount of scraps I create. Of course, assembly is the same thing. If I can do some checking for my assembly during the design process, it's very important. Because most... If I'm doing captive manufacturing, that mean I do my own assembly or I outsource my assembly, it's the same thing. There's assembly rules that typically manufacturing engineers they have to follow. The way the placement of the component on the board. If it's a manual or automated. The rotation of the component. There's different rules that can be applicable to assembly. If I can do these checks during the process of designing the PCB, so I can put manufacturing somebody in my head as a designers before or during the design.

It will help me save time at the end. The last part of doing checking is really electrical checking. When we design PCB, we have to make sure it's going to be functioning design by the electrical engineer. Finding errors in the design related to electrical behavior. For example, the way I'm routing my cases on the board, it may cause some electrical bad behavior. For example, I may create a loop antenna on my board that may have a mode emission. If I'm routing high speed signal to the edge of the board, or maybe how I'm placing component like the capacitors or decoupling capacitors far away from a pin, that would be ineffective capacitor for example.

If I'm routing a trace with multiple veers I'm getting maybe a longer trace. Some of these electrical checking or electrical rules can impact the behavior of the board. If I can find this error or even design cycle, it'll help me save time also. These are three type of checks that can be done. These are all checks done in the PCB. If a design engineer or PCB design can apply during the process. Also when we design PCB, typically we try to test them in a lab. You can maybe, signal integrity test, maybe doing... Probably done a signal to make sure I'm getting the right data while we're shifting in left.

As a design engineer or PCB designers, I want to test my design virtually. Doing testing, like doing crosstalk analysis, undershoot or virtual analysis, doing for example, differential peer signaling analysis, EGR analysis, doing parameter extraction, it will help me find errors or zones in the design before even fabricating the design, before even maybe sometime before we even started the PCB design itself.

The same thing with power. If I can do some quick analysis, like AC analysis, noise analysis, if I can do decoupling capacitor optimization or analysis during the design, it'll help me maybe choose the right capacitor. It'll help me choose the right value. It may help me choose the right placement and maybe routing to the capacitors.Last but not least is thermal. If I can do some thermal analysis on the board to see which component generate more heat than other area. If I change my placement of the component on the board, what kind of impact I'm going to have on the PCB itself?

If I can do this analysis quickly only it'll help me reduce the time I spend on the lab. Of course, people can do some of these with different tools, but if I can provide the user community, one solution can do all of them, one application. That's a huge value. Here in this case, the electronic solution for PCB from Altair, actually it's one application that can allow to do all this kind of stuff. Designer view, raw checking based solution, and also simulation analysis for signal integrity, power integrity and thermal at the board level.

The second part of the electronic system design solution is electrical part. Of course, PCB, they may go in enclosure. For example, if it's a car, they go in a box and you may have multiple maybe unit, we call them ECUs connected through cables, maybe harnesses. You may have antenna on the car, for example. In this case, you can do a study a system over EMC, where you have an impact from board to board through cable. There's a problem for example, maybe one board emitting and maybe other board will be a victim through the cable, you can do analysis on this scenario and study the behavior of one board, other board kind of interaction.

Of course, if you have an antenna used in this case, you want to see the impact of antenna on my PCB, what kind radiation I'm having here. The solution goes beyond that, beyond the PCB only. It actually would cover other area that I'm not touching on here today, because it might, we call it... Has value to you guys, but it's an area that Altair will focus also on. What comes to thermal. I cover the thermal on the PCB itself when I talked about PCB can be scanned for any hot component on the board the way you place it and so on. But of course the PCB, it can go with other PCB in the box and that box enclosure or could be, let's say an ECU or could be any box, could be lot of heat that goes in a plane that could be placed in a hot area, for example.

Or maybe the product that you are designing your customer. Maybe use it maybe in a very hot environment. Studying the behavior of the system, or even the PCB that goes in the box in the system to see what's going to happen from a heat standpoint, study the complete electronic cooling, study the impact of maybe the fan you're using, the air flow, the heat sink, the cabin enclosure, the slouch you're creating.

If I'm a mechanical engineer helping the PCB designer, creating a slot on my enclosure to provide cooling. What kind of slot I have to create. The size of them, allocation of them. This is very important. Solving a problem to conduction conviction is very essential for doing electronic system design cooling. In this case, talking PCV or multiple PCV in the system. Of course, this need to be easy to use. The solution here does not require a CFD expert. You don't have to be a CFD expert to use solution. It's integrated with other ultra solution to make it easier for people to use the solution.

On the mechanical side of the electronic system design, typically PCBs, as I mentioned before, it may go in enclosure. It may be then the product could be a cell phone, could be wearable, could be wide good, for example, refrigerators, could be a dishwasher, a dryer, you have PCs there. These PCB there'll be kind of, what we call it, gypsum environmental conditions. Could be vibration, acceleration. Could be drop. For example, if I have a cell phone that has a PCB circuit board inside it, as a user my phone may drop from my hand. It may break the enclosure, the casing, it may break the screen, but also it may affect the PCB. It may affect the component that goes in the PCB.

Doing some early analysis on the product, on the system that contain a PCB, or maybe at the PCB itself to see example what kind of issue I'm going to have on this board related to vibration, acceleration, solvability. What happened to... There's an issue with solder fatigue, for example. If there's, this may be part of the assembly process, you want to study it here from a mechanical standpoint. Drop analysis. For example, if my device drop, what's going to happen to my PCB, what's going to happen to my component and the PCB. Also, we study the material that goes in PCB.

If I'm using one material versus other material, what's going to be the impact from a structural standpoint on the board. There's different analysis you can do from a mechanical standpoint on the board if you want. To really try to achieve a reliable product at the end. Doing this kind of analysis the goal to virtualize and achieve reliable product at end. On the mechactronic part of the electronic system design solution. Of course, when designing motors, sensors, actuators, these could be a system, could be part of the system. Most of these devices, motors, sensors, actuators, we call plants sometimes, they are driven by electronic circuit. There's some kind of electronic circuitry and PCB driving this type of equipment.

Could be... I just mentioned. Studying the loads on this motors, the impact on the PCB, the current impact maybe on the voltage, maybe could be placement of the board or to maybe the motors to study the heat effect on it. It's very important. In this solution here, it goes beyond just electronics. It supports mechatronic designer analysis and simulation, but also it will have a connection to the PCB through maybe some cost simulation into the board. On the circuit part of the electronic system design solution. In this area, we'll talk about PCB. Most of the boards they're driven by schematic capture driven by schematic. Driving their layout.

Typically electrical engineers, they will design the circuit and they have to analyze it. Typically analyze it maybe with some tools like mathematical tools. The most common tools is SPICE level. SPICE tools. This could be SPICE, could be SPICE, could be PSpice. In this case, we're talking about tools from Alta that it's a spice based solution that allow you to simulate your circuit and study the behavior of the circuit before sending the data into PCB. The last part of the electronic system design solution is the code and code generation. Some PCBs, if not most, they will have some kind of micro controller on the PCBs. This micro controller or micro controllers, they may have... need to have some code running them.

In this case, on this tools in this application will provide solution that allow the software engineers who work with the EE or sometimes the PCB designers to program the microcontroller during the C code through some kind of environment to do some kind of hardware, software simulation on the PCB and the component that goes in the PCB through our environment called Embed. What's Altair advantage while we talking here? As customers involved in PCB design, you may have to use different tools, different application to do your job. You have your car tools. You may have to acquire some simulation tools. You may have to acquire signal integrity, power, integrity, EMC tools, manufacturing checking tools, thermal tools, mechanical tools.

Typically, that's what people usually do. The Altair advantage here, the solution I just mentioned in the last few minutes, it all sits with a single license. It's called Altair Unit. You acquire the Altair Unit you have access to all this analysis and verification environment. Even the manufacturing process. If you're taking a design from your current PCB floor to let's say the shop floor to program all the machines, there's also manufacturing solutions that can be provided to you just through the licensing environment, which is... I did not touch earlier on.

What's customers asking for? Most customers looking for partners, also most customers looking for partner who will understand their challenges, electrical, mechanical ,software architecture, design implementation also. They're not looking for vendors. They're also looking for partner they can provide a solution that address their current and the future challenges. Most customers they're looking for multiple partners. Here, for example, Altair and Altium working together as partners to help their joint customers, which is you guys. We're working together to develop a joint solution, in this case, to help you guys address some of your electronic design needs related to simulation.

To summarize, electronic system design challenges are growing, and we need to shift left to adopt and adopt virtual testing instead of doing physical testing in the lab or in the field. Bringing an integrated solution between Altium and Altair, it'll help you achieve more reliable and robust product. Thank you.