Designing High-Performance Sensor Packages to Ensure Optimized Performance

22 Jan 2025 • 4 minute read

In an era where technology and connectivity reign supreme, electronic, and mechanical design fusion is revolutionizing the user experience. Gone are the days when components could be developed in isolation; the demand for innovative, interconnected products is driving a need for a collaborative approach. As electronic systems grow increasingly complex, designers face the daunting task of ensuring these systems are safe, high quality, and delivered right the first time. This requires a synergy between electronic (ECAD) and mechanical (MCAD) design and other critical functions throughout the value chain. Picture the challenge of crafting a sensor that is both compact and robust while adhering to strict performance standards. Designers today need solutions that allow them to navigate this multifaceted design process effortlessly, making informed decisions at every step.

What if there is a solution that empowers designers to explore different design alternatives, analyze the impact of design changes, and make well-informed decisions to achieve their desired outcomes?

Cadence’s collaboration with Dassault Systèmes offers a transformative approach to product lifecycle management. This blog highlights how the integration of Cadence and Dassault Systems' platforms facilitates smooth collaboration between electronics designers using Allegro X and users of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, such as MCAD SOLIDWORKS and CATIA.

This blog post excerpt is from a presentation by Dinesh Panneerselvam from Dassault Systèmes’ and Steve Durrill from Cadence delivered during their CadenceLIVE Silicon Valley 2024 presentation.

New Era of Engineering Challenges

The chip packages are becoming increasingly complex with the transition from systems on chip (SoCs) to systems in package (SiPs) to package in package (chiplets). With the increasing package density, managing the thermal and heat profile or heating issues is essential.

Further, with increasing system complexity, it has become a challenge for designers to meet aggressive performance requirements and ensure structural reliability. Siloed teams and the handling of requirements separately for functional, physical, and manufacturing designs result in data existing in different siloed databases (EDA, mechanical design, and MEMS), which are the primary reasons for inefficiency.

Siloed databases may further result in data loss and lengthened development cycles. To keep up and mitigate such issues, the industry needs a holistic solution that can maintain performance specifications and meet stringent timing constraints.

Solution: Transition from 2D-Planar Engineering Workflows to 3D-Model Based Workflows

To keep up with the challenges mentioned above, the industry needs a model-based, template-driven managed engineering workflow with built-in multiphysics and multiscale analysis and full system traceability. Cadence and Dassault Systèmes offer a solution that combines various disciplines—electronics, mechanics, software, and systems engineering.

This multidisciplinary approach is essential for creating complex products that harmonize seamlessly with other systems. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers a holistic product design definition, where all these different entities (requirements, functional, logical, and physical) exist in the same system, operate on the same data model, and can communicate with each other. This model-based system engineering (MBSE) approach ensures that all entities are synced (in case of any change in any of these) as the same data is fed to all. For example, if there is a change to the product structure, it'll automatically have positive feedback on whether the requirements are satisfied or not. Again, everything is governed by a work breakdown structure (WBS), where all the data structure is connected.

Case Study: EDA Integration/ MEMS Sensor Design

The Dassault Systèmes team showcased a use case in which they are working with Cadence on a pressure sensor design. By connecting various databases in real time, the goal is to create one data model on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Along with siloed database usage, they mentioned little traceability due to the file-based workflows, time-consuming workflows, and difficulty in reusing and democratizing the simulations as the main reasons behind the inefficiency. The seamless design-simulation collaboration empowers the users to visualize the impact of any change on the system in real time.

For example, suppose the MCAD design is created in SOLIDWORKS, and the electronics design is created in Allegro X. In that case, everything is brought together on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with single data, where any change is reflected in real time. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform enables designers to use requirements-driven verification.

This offers multiphysics solver cores natively mounted on the platform, which makes the design iteration much faster and easier. The new verification process also speeds up the design exploration.

Allegro X Pulse

Cadence’s Allegro X Pulse is the heart and soul of IC packaging and the PCB data platform. It stores and manages all the designs, libraries, and ECAD models. Allegro X Pulse manages the data for the designers building the IC packages or electronic systems while enabling real-time collaboration. Allegro X Pulse links the ECAD world to the MCAD world.

All this is done transparently so that the IC package or PCB designer doesn't have to worry about unnecessary steps. It happens behind the scenes. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform helps to avoid the manual steps in exporting design data.

Conclusion

As the world becomes more connected and autonomous, bridging the gap between CAD and EDA and MCAD or ECAD is essential. The groundbreaking partnership leverages the Cadence Allegro X Design Platform and the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform to optimize the entire value chain for electromechanical systems modeling, design, simulation, and product lifecycle management. The joint solution enables companies to focus on the multidiscipline modeling, simulation, and optimization of their complex, connected electronic systems. With this new multiphysics and multidisciplinary solution, customers can accelerate their end-to-end system development process while optimizing their design for performance, reliability, manufacturability, supply resilience, compliance, and cost.