Mentor Graphics

A leader in software solutions for electroncs design, Mentor Graphics is the only EDA company with a total end-to-end solution for design though manufacturing.

Consultant / Service Provider

Mentor, a Siemens Business

Mentor Graphics® is a technology leader in electronic design automation (EDA), providing software and hardware design solutions that enable companies to develop better electronic products faster and more cost-effectively. The company offers innovative products and solutions that help engineers overcome the design manufacturing challenges they face in the increasingly complex worlds of board and chip design and PCB assembly. Mentor Graphics has the broadest industry portfolio of best-in-class products and is the only EDA company with an end to end solution for design through manufacturing.

Mentor Graphics is the market and technology leader in PCB design and PCB NPI and shop floor optimization solutions, providing many of the world’s largest electronics companies today with a range of scalable solutions to reduce the time, cost and risk of product design, NPI and volume production. Solutions include the Expedition™ series, for the creation of today’s most complex PCB designs; the Board Station® family, the market standard solution for the PCB design challenges of the global enterprise; and the PADS® flow, the leading Windowsbased solution for complex PCB design, Valor® NPI and Valor® MSS integrated suite of manufacturing modules for every step of the assembly process.

Mentor Graphics Postings

9 products »

Valor MSS - End-to-end Solution for PCBA Manufacturing

Valor MSS seamlessly integrates the entire PCB manufacturing process with one easy-to-manage platform. Available as an end-to-end suite, each of the following modules may also be installed separately. One platform supports your en...

Software

Valor MSS - End-to-end Solution for PCBA Manufacturing

Tessent - Silicon Test and Yield Analysis

Tessent combines features of deterministic scan testing, embedded pattern compression, built-in self test, specialized embedded memory test and repair, and boundary scan, as well as board and system-level test technologies. The Tesse...

Software

Tessent - Silicon Test and Yield Analysis

Valor NPI - PCB NPI Software

PCB New Product Introduction (NPI) Platform with Comprehensive DFM Optimization The New Product Introduction (NPI) process can be a time-consuming and costly exercise during the development of new products. At each consecutive step...

Software

Valor NPI - PCB NPI Software

PADS® PCB Design Tools

A complete, but lower-cost PCB design solution for smaller organizations or individuals PADS®, Mentor Graphics’ world-leading desktop PCB design tool, enables you to develop PCBs within a highly productive, scalab...

Software

PADS® PCB Design Tools

Valor® IoT Manufacturing Analytics solution for PCB Assembly

Improve manufacturing operations and decision making based on real time shop-floor information  Achieve goals for on-time delivery, eliminated waste, asset utilization, first pass yield, DPMO and tota...

Software

Valor® IoT Manufacturing Analytics solution for PCB Assembly

HyperLynx PCB Analysis Software

Mentor Graphics offers a complete suite of high-speed PCB electronic circuit simulation software: signal integrity, power integrity, analog simulation, pcb thermal analysis, EMI/EMC design analysis. These circuit simulation sol...

Software

HyperLynx PCB Analysis Software

Xpedition Enterprise™ - PCB Design Flow

Expedition Enterprise™ Provides highly integrated, comprehensive PCB design-to-manufacturing tools that promote collaboration across the extended enterprise. Expedition Enterprise™ from Mentor Graphics is the in...

Software

Xpedition Enterprise™ - PCB  Design Flow

Board Station XE® - PCB Design Flow

A large-scale PCB design flow - particularly targeted at yielding better time-to-market and improving productivity. Board Station XE (BSXE) gives Board Station customers quick and easy access to the most advanced PCB layout...

Software

Board Station XE® - PCB Design Flow

CAMCAD Professional - PCB Manufacturing Software

CAMCAD Professional is a Data Preparation Workstation for native PCB and graphical data, CAM and test support and CAD/CAM verification. CAMCAD Professional is the logical link between design, manufacturing and test for PCB manufacturing...

Software

CAMCAD Professional - PCB Manufacturing Software

14 technical articles »

Modeling And Optimizing Wire Harness Costs For Variation Complexity

Apr 25, 2018 | Sjon Moore

An automotive wire harness rarely has just a single part number that can be ordered and installed in a vehicle. Typically, there are many different versions of the same harness based on the orderable content in the vehicle. These versions (often called harness levels) will have unique part numbers. The quantity of these levels and their content is what is typically called complexity and it has a significant impact on the cost of the harness.

Quantifying these costs is often very difficult especially with manual methods of deriving and costing the complexity solution. Therefore, traditionally, harness costing has focused on the piece cost of each harness level. When these complexity related costs are considered it is typically with overly simplified cost modeling techniques.

This paper will focus on the quantification of these complexity related costs so that they can be modeled allowing automated algorithms to optimize for these costs. A number of real world examples will be provided as well. Since no two businesses are alike, it is the aim of this paper to provide the foundational knowledge and methodology so the reader can assess their own business to model how variation complexity costs affect their business....

Mixed Voltages And Aluminum Conductors: Assesing New Electrcal Technology

Feb 07, 2018 | Olivier Neuman

The architecture of vehicle electrical systems is changing rapidly. Electric and hybrid vehicles are driving mixed voltage systems, and cost pressures are making conductor materials like aluminum an increasingly viable competitor to copper.

This paper presents tradeoff studies at the vehicle level, and how to automatically generate an electrical Failure Mode Effects and Analysis (FMEA) report, as well as how to optimize wire sizes for both copper and aluminum at the platform level....

Electronic Does Not Equal Smart: Service Documentation and Brand Quality

Feb 01, 2018 | Muhammad Askar

This paper briefly summarizes the technologies underpinning the evolution in electrical system diagnosis and repair, which include schematic layout automation using prototypes and rule-based styling, instant language translation, 2D/3D view links with schematics, interactive diagnostic procedures, and dynamically-generated signal-tracing diagrams. These technologies empower after-sales service teams with state-of-the-art capabilities, which not only reduce costs but also improve brand quality in the eyes of its customers. ...

IPC-1782 Standard for Traceability Supporting Counterfeit Components

Jan 04, 2018 | Michael Ford

Traceability has grown from being a specialized need for certain safety critical segments of the industry, to now being a recognized value-add tool for the industry as a whole. The perception of traceability data collection however persists as being a burden that may provide value only when the most rare and disastrous of events take place. Disparate standards have evolved in the industry, mainly dictated by large OEM companies in the market create confusion, as a multitude of requirements and definitions proliferate.

The intent of the IPC-1782 project is to bring the whole principle and perception of traceability up to date. Traceability, as defined in this standard will represent the most effective quality tool available, becoming an intrinsic part of best practice operations, with the encouragement of automated data collection from existing manufacturing systems, integrating quality, reliability, predictive (routine, preventative, and corrective) maintenance, throughput, manufacturing, engineering and supply-chain data, reducing cost of ownership as well as ensuring timeliness and accuracy all the way from a finished product back through to the initial materials and granular attributes about the processes along the way. ...

Luceda Photonics Delivers a Silicon Photonics IC Solution in Tanner L-Edit.

Apr 06, 2017 | Wim Bogaerts, Pieter Dumon, Martin Fiers; Luceda Photonics, Jeff Miller; Mentor Graphics

Silicon photonics is an IC technology where data is transferred using light that is routed on the chip using optical waveguides (Figure 1). Silicon photonics is best known as a method to solve problems with high input/output bandwidth applications. For example, because of ever-growing bandwidth requirements in datacenters, the optical transmit and receive heads are being placed closer and closer to the board and the IC. But, designers also apply this technology to biosensors, medical diagnostics, and environmental monitoring. Regardless of the application, photonic ICs always need integration to electronic circuits and this results in unique challenges....

Analog FastSPICE Platform Full-Circuit PLL Verification

Jun 30, 2016 | Mentor Graphics

When designing PLLs in nanometer CMOS, it is essential to validate the closed-loop PLL performance metrics with nanometer SPICE accuracy before going to silicon. Transistor-level, closed-loop PLL verification has been impractical due to traditional SPICE and RF simulator performance and capacity limitations. By using Analog FastSPICE, designers dont have to trade accuracy for performance.

Read this white paper to see how AFS:

  • Delivers closed-loop PLL transistor-level verification
  • Supports direct jitter measurements
  • Produces phase noise results correlating within 1-2dB of silicon

...

How Reshoring Drives Profitability

May 05, 2016 | Michael Ford.

For many years, manufacturing has sought to increase competitiveness by moving off-shore to countries with lower labour costs. Electronic manufacturing services (EMS) companies provided an essential element to make off-shore transfer happen more quickly, offering further cost reduction opportunities from load balancing. Fierce arguments were put forward to protect the loss of local jobs, although the result was, in almost all cases, inevitable. Today, however, the whole market of PCBbased electronics products has changed significantly. The "pros" of off-shoring are no longer what they once were, and the "cons" are becoming more significant because off-shore manufacturing can no longer satisfy the needs of the market.

In this paper, we expose the real costs of off-shore manufacturing, and put labour cost differentials into perspective. We demonstrate how practically, using existing technologies, re-shored manufacturing can yield better business return, either for an OEM, or through EMS providers.

...

Streamlining PCB Assembly and Test NPI with Shared Component Libraries

Apr 08, 2016 | Julian Coates

PCB assembly designs become more complex year-on-year, yet early-stage form/fit compliance verification of all designed-in components to the intended manufacturing processes remains a challenge. So long as librarians at the design and manufacturing levels continue to maintain their own local standards for component representation, there is no common representation in the design-to-manufacturing phase of the product lifecycle that can provide the basis for transfer of manufacturing process rules to the design level. A comprehensive methodology must be implemented for all component types, not just the minority which happen to conform to formal packaging standards, to successfully left-shift assembly and test DFM analysis to the design level and thus compress NPI cycle times.(...)

This paper will demonstrate the technological components of the working solution: the logic for deriving repeatable and standardized package and pin classifications from a common source of component physical-model content, the method for associating DFA and DFT rules to those classifications, and the transfer of those rules to separate DFM and NPI analysis tools elsewhere in the design-through-manufacturing chain resulting in a consistent DFM process across multiple design and manufacturing organizations....

A New Paradigm For Design Through Manufacture

Apr 19, 2012 | Michael Ford, Valor Division of Mentor Graphics Corp.

Presented at IPC Apex 2012. Working through the New Product Introduction (NPI) flow between product design and manufacturing is usually a challenging process, with both parties being experts in their own fields and inextricably linked in the flow of g...

Dealing with the Top Five Factory Floor Productivity Killers in the PCB Industry

Apr 16, 2009 | Dr. Henry Jurgens; Valor Division of Mentor Graphics Corp.

The worldwide electronics industry has sales of $750 billion, two thirds of which is accounted for by PCB assembly. PCB manufacturing is characterised by an obsessive drive for increased productivity in the context of three significant industry drivers: shorter product lifecycles, more complexity, outsourcing...

4 more technical articles from Mentor Graphics »

62 news releases »

Mentor Announces 27th Annual PCB Technology Leadership Awards Program

Apr 13, 2017 | Mentor, a Siemens business, today announced the call-for-entries of its 27th annual Technology Leadership Awards (TLA) competition, continuing its tradition of recognizing excellence in printed circuit board (PCB) design. Started in 1988, this program is the longest running competition of its kind in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry. It recognizes engineers and CAD designers who use the innovative technology provided by Mentor Graphics Corporation to address today’s complex PCB systems design challenges and produce industry-leading products.

TSMC Collaborates With Mentor Graphics, Enabling Design and Verification Tools for New InFO Technology Variants

Jan 11, 2017 | Mentor Graphics today announced that TSMC has extended its collaboration with Mentor Graphics on the Xpedition® Enterprise platform in conjunction with the Calibre® platform for the design and verification of TSMC’s InFO (Integrated Fan-Out) packaging technology for multi-chip and chip-DRAM integration applications. Mentor developed new Xpedition functionality specifically to support InFO and enable the IC package designer to complete design tasks to TSMC specification. By leveraging the capabilities of both the Calibre and HyperLynx® technologies, the new Xpedition functionality minimizes the designer effort and design rule checking (DRC) cycles required to achieve a DRC-clean InFO GDS file.

Mentor Graphics SystemVision Improves Siemens Building Technologies’ PCB Design Flow Worldwide

Sep 26, 2016 | Mentor Graphics today announced that Siemens Building Technologies has deployed Mentor’s SystemVision® product to Siemens printed circuit board (PCB) design teams around the world, providing an upfront, mechatronic simulation environment and a qualified, central library for the Mentor Graphics® Xpedition® Enterprise PCB design flow. Early simulation using the SystemVision tool allows designers to make design decisions regarding component tradeoffs, find design mistakes, and verify their designs before PCB layout. The central library allows teams to exchange projects around the world, which eliminates errors due to using different libraries and tools for simulation and PCB layout.

Mentor Graphics Announces PADS PCB Product Creation Platform with Voltage Drop and Electronic Cooling Capabilities

May 05, 2016 | Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced a comprehensive product-creation platform based on PADS® PCB software that enables individual engineers and small teams to solve the engineering challenges involved in creating today’s electronic products. With increasing systems design complexity and the need for printed circuit board (PCB), mechanical and systems engineers to access easy-to-deploy tools, the PADS platform has been extended to enable engineers to develop PCB-based systems from concept through manufacturing hand-off.

Mentor Graphics Announces a Secure Plug-and-Play IoT Device and Data Acquisition Solution for Electronics Manufacturing

Mar 16, 2016 | Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced the Valor® internet of things (IoT) Manufacturing solution, a robust hardware device with embedded software for live data collection from all shop-floor machines and processes, leveraging the new Open Manufacturing Language (OML) communication standard. The Valor IoT Manufacturing product enables seamless implementation of advanced practices such as Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory, with plug-and-play deployment and minimal change to the manufacturing environment and work processes.

Mentor Automotive announces Safety Certifiable Digital Instrument Cluster Solution

Oct 18, 2015 | Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced the availability of the Mentor® Automotive Safety Certifiable Digital Instrument Cluster solution enabling safety-critical driver information to be displayed simultaneously with rich 3D graphics on a single instrument cluster display. The software architecture is implemented on a multi-core and even on single-core System-on-Chip, and features very fast boot time. This new solution addresses a key problem for the automotive OEMs: How to migrate safety-critical driver information to full-featured, graphically-rich digital instrument clusters and comply with safety standards including ISO 26262, without pushing up hardware or safety certification costs.

Mentor Graphics Launches Xpedition Package Integrator Flow for IC-Package-Board Design

Mar 23, 2015 | Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced its new Xpedition® Package Integrator flow, the industry’s broadest solution for integrated circuit (IC), package, and printed circuit board (PCB) co-design and optimization. The Package Integrator solution automates planning, assembly and optimization of today’s complex multi-die packages. It incorporates a unique virtual die model concept for true IC-to-package co-optimization. In support of early marketing-level studies for a proposed new device, users can now plan, assemble and optimize complex systems with minimal source data. The new Package Integrator flow allows design teams to realize faster and more efficient physical path finding and seamless tool integration for rapid prototyping, right to the production flow.

HyperLynx Alliance Accelerates High-Speed Design-Ins and Verification

Jan 27, 2015 | Mentor Graphics and Key Industry Partners Align Analysis Tools, Methodologies, Models, and Reference Designs.

Mentor Graphics Announces 25th Annual PCB Technology Leadership Awards Winners

Dec 10, 2014 | Continuing its tradition of promoting and recognizing printed circuit board (PCB) design excellence, Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced the winners of its 25th annual PCB Technology Leadership Awards. Started in 1988, this program is the longest running competition of its kind in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry. It recognizes engineers and designers who use innovative methods and design tools to address today’s complex PCB systems design challenges and produce industry-leading products.

Mentor Graphics Announces Xpedition System Designer for Comprehensive Multi-board Systems Developmen

Oct 28, 2014 | Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT)today announced its newest offering and key building block in the Xpedition® platform, the Xpedition Systems Designer product for multi-board systems connectivity. The Xpedition Systems Designer product captures the hardware description of multi-board systems, from logical system definition down to the individual PCBs, automating multi-level system design synchronization processes to ensure team collaboration with accuracy and faster design productivity.

52 more news releases from Mentor Graphics »

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