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 | |  | | | | | Global Route Environment: Routing at the Abstract Level
Interview with Woody Woodward, Project Lead, GRE
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. | |
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The Cadence Global Route Environment was unveiled on March 26 at PCB West. cdnusers had a chance to talk with Woody Woodward, project lead for Global Route Environment, about the highlights of this new technology.
cdnusers: Tell us about your background working with routing software.
Woody: I’ve been working on PCB router software development since 1985. Over the last 20 years, I’ve had leading roles on development teams for several of Cadence PCB routing products, such as Prance, Prevail, SPECCTRA, and now as project lead for Global Route Environment. I’ve also had the good fortune to work with very talented people through the years, including a few currently on the Global Route Environment team for over 10 years.
cdnusers: What is the one new thing designers should know about the new Cadence Global Route Environment?
Woody: Global Route Environment allows users to manage their routing solution and introduce their design intent at an abstract level. This routing solution abstraction combined with the power of the new global routing engine will allow PCB board designers to significantly reduce their design cycles by facilitating the exploration of design rule trade-offs, early problem detection, and producing quality routing results on heavily constrained designs.
cdnusers: Tell us how this feature works.
Woody: Global Route Environment allows designers to abstract their routing problem through the use of connection bundles. Users can apply design intent on these bundles by defining bundle flows and applying bundle properties. Users can then use the routing engine, which utilizes global routing, to plan single bundles, multiple bundles, or even the entire design. It is this planning technology that allows users to converge on the routing solution while still meeting their design intent.
Cdnusers: Now tell us about a couple more features that users will find helpful when routing with Global Route Environment.
Woody: The Global Route Environment routing solution supports important electrical design constraints such as Timing, Relative Delay, and Differential Pairs, and leverages an advanced means for handling and resolving multiple constraints on connections. In addition, the routing solution supports a native diagonal routing environment much more efficiently and effectively than any previous Cadence PCB automated routing solution.
cdnusers: Now some personal questions. How do you concentrate when working? Any tricks?
Woody: When possible, I reserve different portions of my day for addressing different types of problems and issues. We all need to be good at multitasking and sometimes it’s unavoidable, but I’ve found that by scheduling my day to limit the need to multitask allows me to be more productive. For example, the Global Route Environment project team is a multi-site team and I work in San Diego. I will typically schedule all of my interactions with the Chelmsford site in the morning, schedule all of my interactions with the San Diego site in the early afternoon, and leave intense, critical problem solving for later in the day.
cdnusers: Where do you do your best thinking?
Woody: I've found that I do my best thinking at home during nights when I can’t sleep. Facing critical problems, I will often find that I wake up in the middle of the night contemplating these problems. I no longer try to fight going back to sleep, and find that getting up and working for even only an hour will be very productive. After this productive work, I also find that I can go back to sleep peacefully, knowing that I’ve accomplished something.
Cdnusers: What do you do after a long day or week of working on routing problems to relieve your stress levels?
Woody:. I try to spend time with my wife and family as much as possible. They give me lots of support with my job’s long hours, so I try to repay them with my time whenever I can. In the case of my kids, I volunteer as much time as possible toward coaching and volunteering to the local Little League or go fishing with them at the local lakes. For a quick stress relief, I will often go to the gym or run to clear my head.
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