Mentor’s Thermal Design Software Is The Best. OK, say’s who?
It’s the conclusion from some independent research carried out by Aberdeen Research Group. Last time I showed that Aberdeen had found that Mentor’s customers are almost 3 times faster at completing thermal verification than users of other tools. Let’s take a look at why that is.
Aberdeen found evidence of what users of other tools were doing with the extra time they spent in thermal verification. Late design rework, which is not much of a surprise. As shown in the graph below, Aberdeen found that more than half of these companies would do three or more PCB re-spins. That’s a lot of extra work compared to Mentor’s customers, well over half of whom only do one PCB re-spin.
So we know the extra time spent in thermal verification was taken up by late design rework. How do Mentor’s customers avoid this?
The next graph is very telling. It shows that Mentor’s customers usually review the thermal impact of design changes in ‘real time’, i.e. immediately those design changes are made. Users of other software undertake thermal reviews on an ad hoc basis, and sometimes never! Small wonder that problems are then found very late in the design, or during prototyping after the design is completed.
So why these companies don’t wake up and smell the coffee and just do thermal design reviews far more often, like Mentor’s customers? I’m sure they would if they could, but unfortunately for them it’s not that simple. Almost certainly it’s the tools they’re using that’ holding them back.
Traditional CFD software is time consuming to use, particularly when changes are made to the geometry as the model will have to be re-meshed and the boundary conditions re-applied before it can be solved. That can take days, weeks and sometimes even months, by which time the design has moved on and the results of the simulation will be all but useless.
What sets Mentor’s software apart is that it’s purposely designed to be used in a fast-paced product design environment, and there are very few industries where design times are more compressed than in electronics. If you want more insight then take a look at “Why Mentor Graphics is the Right Choice for Electronics Cooling Analysis” which yours truly had a hand in putting together.
Enjoy,
Dr. J, Hampton Court.
