A single PCB tool

4 Mentor WG

A little less impressive than CADENCE, but equally top-of-the-line, for high-end circuit design, with its own simulation tool. It's just that there are relatively few domestic backers, not as many as Cadence.

Each software, each has its own merits, no good or bad, only skilled software to use, if unified norms and standards that need to change.

Start with a look at some of the tools that big companies use:

Intel: Concept + Allegro + SpecctraQuestDell: ViewDraw + Allegro + SQ also has a section of CaptureHuawei: ViewDraw + Allegro + SpecctraQuest + ExpeditionZTE: Concept + Allegro + SpecctraQuest + ExpeditionUT: The mobile phone division uses PowerPCBCisco: Concept + Allegro + SpecctraQuest

HP: Concept + Allegro + SpecctraQuest Transfer from BoardStation to Allegro Process Motorola: Concept + Allegro + SpecctraQuest transforms from BoardStation to Allegro process

Concept + Allegro + SpecctraQuest has become the mainstream

In the early stage, there were more than 1000 EDA enterprises, but later, there were about 10 EDA enterprises. Among them, Cadence, Mentor and Zuken were mainly high-end products, whose software required to run on the workstation and their operating system was UNIX, and they were expensive. EDA software has been around since the 1980s, when only UNIX supported graphical interfaces, and workstations were much better than PCS, so it has continued to this day, and large companies still use workstations. Protel and Power PCB are mainly oriented to low-end users and have low requirements for computer configuration. They generally run under Windows. General PC can be very good to meet the requirements.

As the level of CPU and related computer hardware continued to improve, Cadence, Mentor and Zuken began to introduce products for Windows, and Cadence moved quickly in this regard. It looks like 2000, because of the bursting of the Internet bubble, the EDA industry was reshuffled and several companies were reorganized.

In terms of market share, Mentor is now the largest, followed by Cadence and Zuken. For a single PCB tool, Allegro has the highest software share among high-end users in China, followed by Power PCB and Protel, which are used by more people in mainland China.

The following are the characteristics of the three companies.

Mentor's products are BoardStation(EN) and Expedition PCB(WG) and acquired PADS(PowerPCBs). EN is the legendary PCB invincible master, those who only consider the duration of the project without considering the cost, always do 8 ~ 12 layers of PCB communication and military research. WG seems to agree with all bbs that this is the best wiring tool on the planet. Not to mention PowerPCB, which is used by many people. After the acquisition of PowerPCB, Mentor continued to walk on two legs, the high-end version of the original Mentor, now the latest version of the Mentor EN2006; The low-end product is still PowerPCB, the new name is PADS2005, the latest is PADS2007, but PADS2005SP2 is a relatively stable version. There is also a German small software is very popular, is EAGLE, in Europe and the United States is very popular market.

Cadence's products are Concept/Allegro and acquired OrCAD. Allegro has been hot lately, especially now that higher-value products such as computer motherboards and graphics cards are in the Allegro format, even though PowerPCB was the industry standard three to five years ago. Cadence acquired OrCAD and introduced the schematic design Capture CIS, which is OrCAD's strong point, together with Cadence's original schematic design Concept HDL, PCB tool Allegro and other signal simulation tools, which are collectively called Cadence PSD. Now called SPB, the latest version 16.0, OrCAD is also integrated into SPB. 15.5 There has been no concept of OrCAD since the beginning. The former OrCAD Capture CIS is now called DESIGN ENTRY CIS.

Zuken is another EDA giant, it is a Japanese, high-end product CR5000, low-end called CADStar. Zuken's software is used by many companies in addition to Japanese companies and those that do business with Japan. Some domestic research institutes and some older TV companies use ZUKEN's software. LG uses Zuken's tools.

Here's a quick list of the three companies' major software offerings.

Mentor: 1.PowerLogic+PowerPcb 2.ViewDraw+Expedition 3. BoardStation The main schematic for Mentor is DxDesigner (an updated version of ViewDraw), which is used for PADS and expeditions, and the Design Archive and Board Archive for BoardStation.

Cadence: Schematic tools mainly include Capture and Concept, while PCB tools include Allegro Layout Plus.

Zuken: 1.Cadstar 2. CR3000, CR5000. CR3000 was upgraded to CR5000, which has two PCB tools: PWS and BD. As of 2007, the CR5000 versions are BD10.0, PWS18.0, and CADSTAR9.0.