NEWS SIMULATION & VERIFICATION
Texas Instruments unveils
customised PSpice tool
PSPICE FOR TI TOOL WILL HELPS ENGINEERS WITH SYSTEM-LEVEL CIRCUIT
SIMULATION AND VERIFICATION. NEIL TYLER REPORTS
Texas Instruments (TI) has unveiled a new customised version of the PSpice simulator from
Cadence Design Systems that will enable engineers to simulate complex analogue circuits with
unlimited analysis of TI power and signal-chain products.
PSpice for TI offers full-featured circuit simulation with a library of more than 5,700 TI
analogue integrated circuit (IC) models, making it easier for engineers to evaluate components
for new designs.
With hardware engineers facing increased demands to produce accurate designs on tight
project timelines, a failure to reliably test a design can lead to costly setbacks.
“Choosing the right simulation software can make or break a design, as it should accelerate
development, not hinder it,” said Kevin Anderson, practice leader for power, automotive and
industrial semiconductor research at Omdia. “Tools that are intuitive and include system-level
simulation capabilities can cut development time and speed time to market.”
PSpice for TI will enable designers to reduce the risk of circuit errors with full validation of
system-level designs before prototype, going beyond the analysis capabilities of many other
simulators on the market. TI will also provide open access to one of the industry’s largest
libraries of IC models, which are automatically synced into the tool.
Engineers can now build a complete schematic without size limitations using a built-in library
of TI power and signal chain models, as well as PSpice analogue behavioural models, enhanced
primitives, and new capability for power designers with configurable power field-effect transistors
and power diodes.
Advanced capabilities include automatic measurements and post-processing, as well as
Monte Carlo and worst-case analysis, enabling engineers to validate their designs over a wide
range of operating conditions and device tolerances. After completing validation of a simulated
design in PSpice for TI, users can open the design in commercial versions of PSpice Designer,
and then transfer the design to other Cadence printed circuit board (PCB) tools such as OrCAD/
Allegro PCB Designer without having to recreate their schematic.
Microchip looks to
simplify AI-at-the-Edge
design
Microchip Technology is partnering with
Cartesiam, Edge Impulse and Motion
Gestures to simplify ML implementation at the
edge using the company’s ARM Cortex based
32-bit microcontrollers and microprocessors
in its MPLAB X Integrated Development
Environment (IDE).
By bringing the interface to these partners’
software and solutions into its design
environment Microchip has positioned itself
to support customers through all phases
of their AI/ML projects including data
gathering, training the models and inference
implementation.
“Adoption of our 32-bit MCUs in AI-at-theedge
applications is growing rapidly and now
these designs are easy for any embedded
system developer to implement,” said Fanie
Duvenhage, vice president of Microchip’s
human machine interface and touch function
group.
Cartesiam, founded in 2016, is a software
publisher specialising in AI development tools
for microcontrollers. It’s NanoEdge AI Studio
allows embedded developers, without any
prior knowledge of AI, to develop specialised
machine learning libraries for microcontrollers.
Edge Impulse provides an end-toend
developer platform for embedded
machine learning. The platform is free for
developers, providing dataset collection,
DSP and ML algorithms, testing and highly
efficient inference code generation across
a wide range of sensor, audio and vision
applications.
Motion Gestures provides powerful
embedded AI-based gesture recognition
software for different sensors, including
touch, motion (i.e. IMU) and vision. Its
platform does not require any training data
collection or programming and uses advanced
machine learning algorithms. As a result,
gesture software development time and costs
are reduced by 10x while gesture recognition
accuracy is increased to nearly 100 percent.
First wBMS for electric vehicles
Analog Devices (ADI) has unveiled the
industry’s first wireless battery management
system (wBMS) and it will debut on General
Motors’ production vehicles powered by
Ultium batteries.
The implementation of ADI’s wBMS
eliminates the traditional wired harness,
saving up to 90% of the wiring and up to
15% of the volume in the battery pack,
as well as improving design flexibility and
manufacturability.
The wBMS includes all integrated circuits,
hardware and software for power, battery
management, RF communication, and
system functions in a single system-level
product that supports ASIL-D safety and
module-level security.
“The transition of battery packs from
wired to wireless connectivity enables
automotive manufacturers to scale
their electric vehicle platforms across
multiple vehicle models to meet growing
consumer demand,” said Patrick Morgan,
Vice President, Automotive at Analog
Devices. “Our wBMS solution simplifies
manufacturing, but also allows new systems
to be built on wireless data, accelerating
the entire industry towards a sustainable
future.”
Additional system features enable
batteries to measure and report their
own performance, increasing early failure
detection, and enabling optimised battery
pack assembly. The data can be monitored
remotely throughout the battery lifecycle –
from assembly to warehouse and transport
through installation, maintenance and into a
second-life phase.
8 22 September 2020 www.newelectronics.co.uk
/www.newelectronics.co.uk