fiXtress

For Electronic Circuits

Today’s electronic designs are becoming increasingly complex, making it harder to detect errors that generate high costs and hundreds of work hours. Detecting these errors in advance can be instrumental in preventing these damages. Unfortunately, in many cases, these errors are discovered only in the testing phase or at the customer’s site.

BQR fiXtress is a powerful and unique design error detection and stress analysis tool for electrical circuits. fiXtress detects design errors during the design phase, before layout and production. This way, no schematic, connectivity or stress errors are found in the qualification tests during final verification. fiXtress shortens design cycles and time to market, which saves immense sums as well as bolstering corporate reputation.

fiXtress is a superior Design for Reliability (DfR) suite, serving as an add-on for any Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tool. It is the only tool integrating design error detection with electrical stress, thermal, MTBF and service life prediction at the schematic level, before PCB layout and production. fiXtress modules can either operate standalone, or complement other modules to provide a comprehensive DfR solution for electrical circuits and PCB design.

fiXtress includes the following modules

Benefits

• Automated Schematic Review tool; Detect hidden design errors, driven by Electrical Stress, Reliability, Testability and Safety analysis
• fiXtress uses the ICD (interface Control Document) signals and their tolerance, this means we do a real stress analysis and schematic review based on the power supplies and loads
• Single and Multi-Boards analysis using the ICD between PCBs, if you do not use the ICD it is not a real analysis
• Ready to use 17 groups of design rules, each one about 15 sub-groups
• User can define easily new design rules for different applications such as Testability, ESD and Safety (ready 56 rules)
• Rules are not scripts which run individually one by one, fiXtress runs all rules together using the results effects between components
• Advanced level of rules that can check group of signals & BUSs between chips
• Check for every pin the applied actual voltage and current, that comes from a real stress analysis to fulfil the components standards
• Prevent hidden design errors, the cause of NFF (No Failure Found) during service
• Very fast and accurate results in minutes for hundreds of rules on a 100,000 pads PCB with 25,000 components
• Ready to use derating standards
• User can create his own derating standard
• Detect all EOS (Electrical Over Stress) violations with Pareto, overstress and overdesign reports
• Unique Thermal analysis that estimate the average temperature rise over the cold-plate, for accurate stress Derating
• Calculate the accurate MTBF based on real electrical and thermal stress
• MTBF prediction for all available standards
• Drive reliability data automatically to all RAMS analysis (FMECA, FTA, RBD, MTTR)

 

Differences between fiXtress, DRC and Spice

The use of fiXtress does not preclude the use of DRC or Spice but may rather be used as a supplement to tests and analysis that they cannot encompass or provide. DRC may be used to discover and fix simple errors such as floating inputs, shorted outputs, missing drivers to the net, etc. and then let fiXtress discover the errors that DRC cannot detect.
The purpose of the Spice is to display the waveform for each signal including noise in relatively small analog circuits and adjust the component values so that the signal is as expected and clear of noise. Spice cannot be used in digital circuits with large components. The purpose of fiXtress is to check errors in the design and analysis of stresses. fiXtress is less suitable for switching power supplies than Spice. Yet, for DC/DC converters, fiXtress handles very well many types found in present PCBs.

Conclusions

fiXtress is a new EDA plug-In software to any schematic capture which helps the designer to detect hidden errors early in the design process. fiXtress is using an Automated Schematic Review method which is empowered by electrical circuits stress analysis and a database of rules. A Rule Wizard Editor is available to add new rules. The Tool uses C++ and not scripts and run very fast on very large boards. Furthermore, the fiXtress uses the power signals and the loads (ICD: Interface Control Document) from the connectors to perform real simulation as it is powered in real use, in comparison to other tools that do not use the ICD.