CSA Catapult has identified several requirements and optimisations to Zuken’s CR-8000 Design Force chip, package and PCB co-design software that will provide designers of power electronic products with the ability to co-develop mechanical and electrical design in unison. The integration with industry simulation tools enables the design iteration needed to explore future design for compound ICs.
As a result of the collaboration, a function was created that is used to generate interconnections between chips and copper layers in a substrate or a printed circuit board, as well as a function to export a CAD model in a format compatible with FEM software.
These features will help designers significantly decrease the time required to generate a 3D model of the power module substrate, chip layout, and chip-to-chip as well as chip-to-copper interconnections.
“The creation of a 3D model of the substrate, chip layout and chip interconnections is an important part of the early-stage power module design process,” says CSA Catapult’s Dr Alejandro Vilarruel Parra, “advanced design solutions have helped to provide a preview of the module performance, which in turn makes our decision-making process faster when several concepts are being compared or helps to steer the refinement of the module geometry if a concept has already been selected.” The new capability is included in the 2022 release of CR-8000 Design Force.
