Magma’s SystemNav speeds board-level failure analysis by enabling signal trace between chips, stacked dies, PCBs and MCMs

ISTFA, SAN JOSE, USA: Magma Design Automation has announced the SystemNav, a next-generation tool that extends CAD navigation and circuit debug from integrated circuits (ICs) to stacked die, printed circuit boards (PCBs) and multichip modules (MCMs).

SystemNav is the only commercially available tool that integrates multiple, interactive IC and PCB online trace and circuit debugging with CAD navigation. SystemNav allows rapid signal traces on chips, stacked dies and MCMs and PCBs. With SystemNav, fab teams can trace signals from chip to board, back to chip and then quickly navigate failure analysis tools to X, Y locations to determine the root cause of the fault.

“Since we introduced this unique technology in the BoardView product, we’ve worked closely with customers to identify and develop critical enhancements and build a more robust solution,” said Ankush Oberai, GM and VP of Magma’s Yield Management Business Unit. “With the next-generation SystemNav we offer more comprehensive capabilities, including localizing and tracing faults to, from and through commonly used stacked dies. Its ability to shorten the time required for fault isolation and root cause analysis makes SystemNav a must-have for today’s fab teams.”

SystemNav: Extending Industry-Standard Camelot CAD Navigation to Board-Level Debug
Like BoardView, Magma’s first-generation tool, SystemNav leverages Magma’s industry-standard Camelot IC CAD navigation and circuit debug to trace signals between the chip and the board. Its framework is both extensible and modular enabling many new features and functions, such as 3D cross- sectioning and schematic cross mapping. It reads industry-standard PCB and chip layout formats and displays them graphically. Formats supported include OASIS, Virtuoso, Gerber, GDSII and AutoCAD Drawing Exchange Format (DXF). Chip layouts are loaded from the Camelot database.

For every chip on the board, the user can invoke both SystemNav and Camelot’s MaskView. This enables the user to seamlessly move from an intra-die chip view of the layout and netlists using MaskView to a macro view of a signal trace from die to board using SystemNav, making fault tracing and diagnostics much easier.

Magma will feature SystemNav at the 37th International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis (ISTFA) in Booth #102 Nov. 15-16 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.