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Divide and Conquer: The New Team Design Methodology
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
This article discusses the fundamentals of a new team design methodology, citing its benefits over serial processes and manual team design methodologies.
By John Isaac
In the early to mid-1990s, printed circuit board (PCB) designers heralded design reuse and variant tools that improved productivity. But their biggest challenge today is trying to incorporate new methodologies with existing processes.
Imagine you are a PCB design manager at a multinational, high-tech company. A large, complex board design has just been assigned to your design team, which incorporates memory, high-speed digital FPGA and analog sections. It must be completed in one month instead of the normal three or more months. A few options exist for shortening this design schedule to meet the deadline, but none are desirable. As the design manager, either you or your design team could work around the clock on the design. A third option involves manually splitting up the design and editing ASCII files. These are examples of design processes many companies use today.
Now, imagine a simple, automated process that allows design teams to work simultaneously on the same PCB layout design during a normal workday. This "team design" methodology turns traditional serial design processes into parallel ones, reducing the time required to complete the overall design, while simultaneously giving PCB design specialists more time to concentrate on areas of expertise. This new methodology also enables effective resource management and workload distribution that both reduces the need for overtime and greatly increases design throughput. It also should eliminate errors inherent in manual team design process and positively affect overall board quality and performance.
Figure 1. The design has been split into three partitions, with a high pin-count FPGA located in Split1_.FPGA. An analog expert now can be assigned to complete Split3_Analog, while another team member is routing Split2_Memory.
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For years, companies have been breaking their designs down into reuse blocks, or using logical partitioning, to distribute project workloads among team members. However, the nature of breaking a project apart requires that it be reassembled in the end.
Manual editing, or "hacking," of ASCII design files is a common workaround involving copying board design files. In different copies of the board, designers manipulate sections of the files that represent different areas of the board. Designer 1 edits a section of the file that represents one area of the board and Designer 2 edits another section of the file that represents a different area.
However, if Designer 1 added or moved a component in their area of the board and did not communicate the change to Designer 2, the design file will not merge properly. This is just one of the many ways in which data and format mismatches could occur. Finding and correcting these errors can be a tedious and time-consuming process.
A Better Way to Cooperate
One company1 has analyzed current team design processes, and recognized limitations in accelerating design times, and created solutions2 to automate efficient team design methodology. This analysis identified a number of requirements necessary to move team design away from traditional, manual design to new, parallel design. In addition to ensuring design data integrity throughout the process, the methodology must be flexible and easy to use. To facilitate the partitioning and rejoining of a design, a concurrent process should automate the splitting of the design into editable partitions. Along with comprehensive placement, interactive and automatic routing of each partition, the ability to coordinate routing between the reserved areas will further enhance productivity.
Simultaneous Design Work. By allowing multiple designers to work simultaneously on the same layout design, design teams will be able to "divide and conquer" projects in a fraction of traditional schedules. This process can eliminate many problems associated with traditional team design processes through an automated design methodology that manages all edits and keeps design files synchronized while multiple designers work on the same PCB layout.
Any number of reserved areas may be drawn on the board. Each reserved area should be given a name, such as design functionality or a designer's name, before subdirectories are created in a master design — or complete PCB layout in its current state — database.
Figure 2. Before Update: The designer in Split 1 has chosen to view a 'peer-to-peer' update of edits in Split 2.
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Figure 3. After Update: The designer in Split 1 can view edits from Split 2. The guide pins on the border between Split 1 and Split 2 have guided the routing of nets shared between partitions.
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The board then is "split" into various partitions, where each includes data from the entire master design prior to the split, and only allows elements within each partition to be edited. Figure 1 shows a design partitioned into three sections. Where a mixed-technology design with analog, high-speed digital FPGA and memory sections is being designed, three designers now can work simultaneously within their assigned partitions and up to the edge of the adjoining ones.
Advanced Editing Capabilities. Designers must have placement, interactive and automatic route editing capabilities that allow independent completion of their partitions. With such capabilities, on a board that is partitioned into three sections, designers may decrease design cycle time by as much as a factor of three.
Automated Rejoin Process. When the partitions are re-joined, the automatic router may be used to complete the traces according to the design rules established within the master design database. Additionally, guide pins, or virtual points in space that the nets will route through, may be added in the master design prior to a split to guide and optimize routing up to the edge of and between reserved areas.
Viewing All Edits. To ensure that each designer is aware of potential changes to other partitions that could affect the PCB layout, a team design tool must allow designers to view edits from other partitions. This is achieved in two ways: First, all design partitions can be rejoined to the master design database. When the master design is resplit into partitions, each designer can see all edits from the updated master design. Second, designers can communicate changes between the partitions (without rejoining and resplitting) through a process of "peer-to-peer" updates. Designers can select any, or all, partitions in which they wish to see updates. Then, they can view edits up to the last save of the selected partitions (Figures 2 and 3).
Forward Looking and Future Thinking
Not only can design cycle time be reduced through parallel design processes, but it also can facilitate design team collaboration, effective resource management, layout design time reduction and functional design specialization. Key benefits of a new team design methodology include:
- Significant reduction in layout design time — Team design facilitates parallel design processes on previously serial tasks. Whether used on a new, large-board design or a critical ECO, any number of partitions may be established.
- Functional specialization — Through a parallel design methodology, design specialists can concentrate on their functional areas of expertise without causing schedule delays to the overall design. For example, one designer could concentrate on the high-speed digital section of the design, while another concentrates on the analog section.
- Collaboration across geographically dispersed design teams — Team design enables effective resource management and workload distribution that reduces the need for overtime and increases design throughput. With this benefit, parallel design methodologies can be achieved on a global scale. Designers can lay out their sections of a board and move on to new projects while other team members literally are home in bed.
- Outsourcing — Team design facilitates optimal use of service bureaus because design partitions can be shared beyond networked team members. If certain projects require the expertise of design specialists at service bureaus, team design allows the main design team to complete the remaining sections of the board and be confident that errors will not be introduced into the design as data is exchanged between the different sites.
Conclusion
After analyzing the problems associated with the current manual processes, the aforementioned solution2 allows users to partition designs arbitrarily without any logistical or physical restriction concerns, pass the partitions to multiple designers, ensure partition-to-partition routes, perform peer-to-peer updates, and rejoin the partitions into the master design. This is accomplished without the problems associated with editing multiple ASCII files because of an automated process that maintains design data integrity. Additionally, design teams can achieve greater team design rewards by lowering the risks involved.
1 Mentor Graphics2 TeamPCB
John Isaac, market development director for Mentor Graphics Corp., Systems Design Division, may be contacted at 1811 Pike Rd., Longmont, CO 80501; (800) 592-2210; E-mail: john_isaac@mentor.com