for users of Altium Designer User Guide, version 1

for users of Altium Designer User Guide, version 1.0

Page 2 of 29 sintecs.nl/eda/

HyperLynx® Connector User Guide, Rev. 1.0

Revision History Revision Brief Description of Changes Date of Issue Author/ Editor 0.1 Initial Issue 16th of April 2020 HK 0.2 Update manual 29th of April 2020 HK 0.3 Updated manual with rev2

HL_Connector release 15st of July 2020 HK

0.4 Updated Layout of the document 20th of July 2020 PY 0.5 Updated manual with rev3

HL_Connector release 24th of March 2020 AT

1.0 Update manual 7th of April 2021 AT

Terms and Conditions Sintecs warrants products under defined regional warranty periods.

Sintecs sells products and services worldwide and declares regional General Terms & Conditions of Sale, and Purchase Order Terms & Conditions.

Visit http://www.sintecs.nl/terms-and-conditions.

For contact information, refer to contact information on the last page of this user guide or visit our website contact us: https://www.sintecs.eu/en/contact.

Customer Support contact Contact Sintecs support by visiting: https://sintecs.nl/contact/

Customer feedback If you have any difficulties using this user guide, discover an error, or just want to provide some feedback, contact Sintecs support. Detail any errors you find. We will correct the errors or problems as soon as possible and post the revised user guide on our website.

New releases Check the Sintecs HyperLynx® Connector page for updates: https://sintecs.nl/en/hyperlynx-connector/

http://sintecs.nl/eda/

https://www.sintecs.eu/en/contact

https://sintecs.nl/contact/

https://sintecs.nl/en/hyperlynx-connector/



Table of Contents

REVISION HISTORY ............................................................................................................................................. 2 TERMS AND CONDITIONS ..................................................................................................................................... 2 CUSTOMER SUPPORT CONTACT ........................................................................................................................... 2 CUSTOMER FEEDBACK ......................................................................................................................................... 2 NEW RELEASES .................................................................................................................................................. 2

INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................... 4

INSTALLATION ...................................................................................................................................... 5

SETTINGS MENU .................................................................................................................................... 7

SETTING UP DATABASE ........................................................................................................................ 9

COMPONENTS TAB ............................................................................................................................. 10

ASSIGNING PASSIVE COMPONENTS..................................................................................................................... 10 ASSIGNING IBIS MODELS FOR ACTIVE COMPONENTS ........................................................................................... 14 EXPORTING PART NAME ATTRIBUTE AND VALUES TO THE .HYP FILE ....................................................................... 16

POWER NETS TAB ................................................................................................................................ 17

DIFFERENTIAL PAIRS TAB ................................................................................................................... 19

NET RULES TAB ................................................................................................................................... 20

LAYERSTACK TAB ............................................................................................................................... 23

IBIS EDITOR TAB .................................................................................................................................. 26

SAVING DATABASE ............................................................................................................................. 27

LAUNCHING HYPERLYNX® ................................................................................................................... 28

UPDATING HYPERLYNX® ..................................................................................................................... 29




Introduction

The HyperLynx® Connector from Sintecs tightly integrates Altium Designer for PCB layout and HyperLynx® from Mentor Graphics for signal integrity. The Connector is a menu item add-in (embedded “HyperLynx®”) providing support to set up simulation database, models and stack-up and launch for HyperLynx® natively from within Altium Designer environment. The Connector brings full-featured signal integrity analysis and verification from Mentor Graphics to every Altium user while a user can stay in the familiar environment.

The Connector leverages HyperLynx® SI ALT ease of use and automated workflows, making complex SI analysis tasks accessible to the layout engineer while still providing the detailed modelling and simulation accuracy demanded by signal integrity experts.




Installation

HyperLynx® Connector automatically detects the Altium Designer installation on your machine and then installs the required files in the appropriate directory.

There is the message confirming that the installation is completed.




The new panel “PCB HyperLynx Connector” becomes available in the “Panels” section of Altium Designer. The button “Panels” is located at the bottom right of the Altium Designer window.




Settings Menu

After opening the HyperLynx® Connector panel, the application automatically scans the system and searches for the installed HyperLynx® software in the default C:\MentorGraphics\ folder and suggests selecting one of the available versions.

Pressing the “Help” button leads to opening the present user manual.

When starting from scratch, the database of the Connector application is empty by default. The environment must be configured first.

To start environment configuration please follow the “Settings” menu item (see below).




After selecting the “Settings” item, the following window pops up:

Click “Browse” to select the location of the HyperLynx® installation folder.

In the screenshot shown above, we select the HLVX2.8 directory in the “MentorGraphics” folder tree and the Connector application automatically detects the HyperLynx® installation. In the above example, this is the VX2.8 release.

It becomes possible now to define IBIS model directories, which will be added to the HyperLynx® model search path. The last step is to add additional reference designator mappings if they are not present in the current list. By that HyperLynx® software receives correct settings for each referenced designator.

Differential pairs are read out automatically from the Altium Designer database. However, it is also possible to add them manually.




Setting Up Database

Once the settings correctly defined for the project, it is time to load the Altium database to the Connector application. Click “Setup Database”.

The components, nets and stack-up data will be read out into the Connector application. This data will be used for configuring the HyperLynx® simulation database, for ease of use later while running simulations within the HyperLynx® tool suite.

A progress bar will display the progress of the import action.




Components Tab

Once the Altium design container information is imported into the Connector application, configuring the database can be started. The first step of the model assignment should be done within the “Components” tab.

Assigning passive components To assign the values for the capacitors, it is needed first to add the parameters for the capacitor values. This step makes easier referring the right capacitor values to the appropriate reference designators. Click “Add parameters” and a list of all the parameters available in the design will be shown. In our case, we will select “Capacitance” parameter.




The new column called “Capacitance” is added. By selecting components from the list below, in our case capacitors C1-C10, and pressing the button “Copy to Value”, information from the “Capacitance” column will be copied to the “Value” column for the selected components, if it has a correct format.

It is also possible to assign the value for passive components manually. By selecting the column header “Capacitance”, the capacitor values will be sorted. This makes it easier to operate with multiple reference designators at the same time and assigning models at once.




On the screenshot below there are several selected rows with reference designators, which all have the same capacitor value. After selecting all the appropriate rows, it is possible to fill in the required capacitor value in the “Value” box(-es). For instance, for the value of 47 uF, it is allowed to fill “47u” and the application will automatically correct the extension. After clicking “Assign model”, the corresponding value will be filled into the table.

The same can be done for resistors. First, apply the filter for all the resistor reference designators and then choose the “Value” parameter.




Then press CTRL+A to select all resistors and copy the data to the “Value” column.




Assigning IBIS models for active components For the active components (IC’s) IBIS models have to be assigned instead of values. First choose the “PartNumber” parameter for easier selecting correct IBIS models. Click then on the “IBIS” cell of the table to see a drop-down menu with available IBIS models related. It is required to set the right IBIS model and the component name from the IBIS model.




To delete all the model assignments, use the button “Clear Table”. Please be careful, since there is no undo option.




Exporting part name attribute and values to the .hyp file From the “Сomponents” tab, the “Part Name” and “Value” attributes can be added to the .hyp file for easier parts’ definition in the HyperLynx® database.

This can be done as shown below, User can select the correct attribute for name and value.

Selected parameters will be shown in HyperLynx® model assignment dialog window:




Power Nets Tab

In the tab “Power Nets”, all the power nets that are needed for the HyperLynx® software to identify the correct power level can be described.

The filter for the nets that contain a “V” letter for easier selecting the power nets is shown below.




Assign the corresponding voltages for the filtered nets as shown below.

The same must be done for the ground nets. Select the ground by filtering them on "GND" or "GROUND" names, or another name you assigned for the ground nets. Assign then the corresponding (0 V) voltage for the ground nets.




Differential Pairs Tab

In the “Differential Pairs” tab, the differential pairs for HyperLynx® can be defined.

HyperLynx® Connector application will automatically recognize the differential pairs setup in Altium. However, it is also possible to create differential pair from two selected nets manually.

Positive and negative nets can be swapped if needed.




Net Rules Tab

In the “Net Rules” tab the appropriate rules must be defined for HyperLynx®.

The nets can be filtered now, and groups of nets can be selected by pressing and holding the Shift button.




In the image below we selected the DDR group to change the frequency of the DDR data nets.

Changing the frequency of one DDR net to 800 MHz is shown below.




Further pressing Enter makes all the selected nets (DDR data in our case) having the frequency changed to 800 MHz.




LayerStack Tab

In the “LayerStack” tab, the correct values for the stack-up should be defined.

In the screenshot below there are on the left the stack-up as it is displayed in the Altium tool and on the right the stack-up read into the HyperLynx® Connector application.




By default, the units are displayed in Metrics, but it is also possible to display the units in English measures. The switcher is available at the header of the table (“Measurement units” field).




It is highly important to make a correct stack-up assignment to provide the correct further layer usage (substrate, signal, or plane).

It is also highly important to indicate the right thicknesses, dielectric constants (Er) and other stack-up characteristics.




IBIS Editor Tab

In the “IBIS Editor” tab, all the directories with models (setup in the “Settings” menu) will be displayed.

Double click on an IBIS model opens the HyperLynx® IBIS editor.




Saving Database

While saving a database, a file explorer window stays open with the location of the newly created files.

The Connector application will create a .bud file, a .ref file, a HyperLynx® file.

In the .bud file, the stack-up and the assigned power rails are described.

In the .ref file, the component/IBIS model assignments are stored.




Launching HyperLynx®

Once the environment is configured, everything is ready for launching HyperLynx® with the created and configured database.




Updating HyperLynx®

In case the newer HyperLynx® is installed, the HyperLynx® Connector application will detect it when you start Altium Designer. The user will be suggested to choose the release to use. This is only asked once.

To switch between version later please follow the “Settings” menu item as it shown below.


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