Why talk about schematic libraries in a blog focused on system verification? Most systems (printed circuit boards on up) are still designed using schematic capture software.
I was talking to a manager at a medical devices company the other day about his company’s schematic symbol library. Like most libraries, it contained schematic symbols and a few “extra bits” of data such as internal part numbers and references to the PCB footprints. I then asked if his engineers typically ran signal integrity analysis and functional verification. He said yes, these were common tasks. Finally, I asked how the engineers passed the correct model names into the SI tool and how they brought the VHDL/Verilog models and correct timing into the simulations and was told “Its a manual process”.
A well planned schematic library provides all the hooks needed for downstream design and verification processes including functional simulation and signal integrity analysis. All the major “big company” design systems support these capabilities. But none of them do it out of the box. (more…)
