Cadence PCB success stories

Imagine Communications and Cadence

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About Imagine Communications Imagine Communications, headquartered in Frisco, Texas, is a leading supplier of live production, playout, multiscreen delivery, and next-generation ad management solutions. Broadcasters, networks, video service providers, and enterprises around the world rely on the company's optimized, future-proof, multiscreen video and revenue enablement solutions every day to support their mission- critical operations. Nearly half the world's video channels traverse Imagine products, and its software solutions drive close to a third of global ad revenue. Boris Nevelev is a senior hardware design engineer at the company. Nevelev's team works with the PCB design team to develop boards for high-definition video-processing equipment. Key Challenges Over the years, the boards that the teams develop have only grown in size and complexity. It's not uncommon for large routers to have boards with more than 50 layers, thousands of differential pairs, long traces, different signal types, and multiple interface connections, for example. As Nevelev explained, the teams soon outgrew their existing PCB design tools. There were simply too many limitations to what they could do, and having to handle certain tasks manually didn't support their quality or time-to-market requirements. In addition, the teams had simplistic simulation technology that was inadequate for DDR4 and 10G Ethernet. Lacking a way to catch problems with the boards before they reached the fab, the teams had to endure multiple prototype re-spins. The Solution and Results The teams evaluated a number of available solutions before choosing Cadence ® Allegro ® PCB Designer, the Allegro EDM Solution, Allegro Design Entry Capture, Allegro Sigrity Power- Aware SI Option, and the entire suite of Cadence Sigrity™ signal integrity tools. The Sigrity simulation capabilities, tightly integrated with Allegro PCB Designer, sealed the deal. Designing Complex, High-Speed Boards with Fewer Re-Spins Imagine Communications and Cadence Challenges • Meet time-to-market and quality requirements on dense, complex high-speed boards • Increase team productivity by reducing design iterations • Eliminate unnecessary board re-spins Cadence Solutions • Allegro PCB Designer • Allegro EDM Solution – Allegro Data Manager – Allegro Library Manager – Allegro Flow Manager – Allegro Part Information Manager – Allegro Design Authoring – Allegro PCB Team Design • Allegro Design Entry Capture • Allegro Sigrity Power-Aware SI Option Results • Ability to design and deliver larger, more complex, higher quality high-speed boards • Reduced the number of iterations on large boards from up to four to a maximum of two • Increased team productivity, with ability to focus more on design enhancements • Reduced turnaround time by 50% through ability for two engineers to work simultaneously on the same design file • Configure Allegro EDM Solution upfront for the target application

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