Mentor Graphics released of the latest version of its Board Station design flow for large, enterprise customers. The Board Station flow includes tools for design creation, layout and manufacture, and is for enterprise design teams.

The release offers improved integration with the enterprise, as well as improved design productivity and 'what if' signal integrity analysis. New feature include:

• Library and data management -- Tighter integration with DMS and added functionality to provide off-the-shelf RoHS design-for-compliance capabilities.
• Constraint editor system -- Addition of electrical rules entry, layout and analysis functionality to complement the high-speed physical rules already provided.
• Signal integrity verification -- Addition of the newly released ICX Pro Explorer functionality to the flow, Mentor's high-speed constraint development tool.
• Design layout -- Significant productivity enhancement capabilities including additional support for layout of flex boards; trace glossing so designers can more closely control interactive routing on dense designs; hard and soft autorouting "fences" to help control routing around dense BGAs as opposed to through them resulting in higher routing completion rates; additional gate and pin swapping capabilities to optimize layout.
• FPGA-on-Board -- Improved integration of I/O Designer to accommodate high pin count, high performance FPGA implementation.

Mentor Graphics, mentor.com