December 8, 2003 -- Electronic design automation has evolved over the past 20 years as isolated activities for each piece of a design. It has been common practice to separate the electrical design and analysis from the physical implementation domains at both the IC and package/module and printed-circuit-board levels. EDA vendors have developed closed methodologies and tool sets for different design phases, requiring manual handoffs and multiple iteration loops that can result in costly errors and delays.

However, the complexity of today's new technologies bridges these traditional domains and renders traditional design methods inadequate in terms of accuracy, efficiency and cost. An entirely new EDA approach is required in order to ensure complete design closure between IC, package, module and PCB design phases.

By James Spoto and Tom Quan. (Spoto is CEO and president and Quan is vice president, product management, at Applied Wave Research Inc.)