Power supply design tool identifies high-via currents and high resistance paths

Altium and Nimbic are partnering in delivering a new power supply design software called Altium PI-DC to identify potential failure points such as high via currents that could cause fusing, or high resistance neck-down regions resulting in excessive voltage drop. Altium PI-DC is based on Nimbic’s specialized 3D full-wave electromagnetic solver. “Nimbic views this relationship with Altium as a significant opportunity to expand our market presence,” said Bala Vishwanath, Chief Marketing Officer of Nimbic. “With Altium’s PCB knowledge and Nimbic’s Electromagnetic Simulation expertise, we have the ability to raise the bar and introduce solutions that are no longer cost prohibitive allowing companies not only to increase productivity, but also design for reliability.” Altium PI-DC integrates into Altium Designer as an optional extension. Nets for analysis are selected in Altium Designer with DC voltage drop and current density results displayed directly over the layout. This allows a designer to interactively identify and fix issues with no guess work about what layout structure might be causing the issue, says Altium. “BGAs have hundreds of power and ground pins with numerous supply rails requiring complex networks of capacitors to manage “pure” power. The sophistication of the PDN (power distribution network) requires engineers to be able to effectively analyze and make c...