A users perspective of EMC and signal integrity tools

In response to the wide ranging demands for EMC software GEC Marconi has followed the EMC software market for several years now. Most attention has been paid to commercially supported software as this is generally the most user friendly and the most likely to be included by engineers in their portfolio of design tools. The EMC software activity has been carried out by engineers at GEC Marconi Research Centre who were primarily focused on EMC software as a design tool rather than the intricacies of the numerical code. The advantage of this activity being carried out at the Research Centre is the immediate exposure of personnel to a wide variety of developmental technologies and the close proximity of experts in the field of electromagnetism. This helps when considering what the EMC tools of the near to mid-term future will need to provide in order to support the design of future technology. This paper focuses on EMC software from a user´s perspective. The paper discusses the needs for EMC software, how these needs are catered for, how the users see the EMC software market and the main problems users encounter. Particular attention is paid to the rise of `Advisor Systems´, also referred to as `trade-off´ tools, and the issues surrounding the design of thin-film multichip modules, known as MCM-Ds