Keeping cool

An independent survey by the Aberdeen Group found that users of Flomerics’ thermal analysis software complete thermal design verification three times faster and have over 40% fewer re-spins on average per printed circuit board (PCB) design than non-users.

The survey shows that 65% of Flomerics’ users have only one re-spin, 24% have two, 11% have three and none have 4 or more. For companies not using Flomerics’ software, only 13% have one re-spin, 34% have two, 48% have three, and 5% have four or more.

The survey also showed that Flomerics’ customers are ahead of the industry curve in performing thermal design reviews, with 47% saying they perform “real-time” reviews and 32% “daily” reviews. For companies not using Flomerics’ software, only 11% perform real-time reviews, 5% perform daily reviews, 8% perform monthly reviews, 42% perform ad-hoc reviews and 26% never carry out thermal design reviews at all.

These results are significant because the top pressure in the electronics business – cited by 53% of electronics manufacturers in Aberdeen’s benchmark surveys – is decreasing time to market. This is followed by the need to improve productivity (45%), driven by the need to reduce cost as well as time.

Flomerics’ promotes an integrated analysis environment that includes Flo/PCB for board-level thermal analysis, Flotherm for system and component-level thermal analysis, and Flo/EMC for electromagnetic compatibility analysis. Flomerics also partners with companies such as Cadence, Parametric Technology, and Dassault Systemes to build more integrated design solutions for the marketplace.

The Aberdeen Group survey examined the electronic design procedures, experiences, and intentions of about 170 electronics companies between December 2006 and January 2007.

Responding participants were interviewed and completed an in-depth survey that included questions designed to determine the current challenges of increasingly shorter windows of opportunity, the effectiveness of existing electronic design procedures and infrastructures, the use of automation to improve and accelerate design, and the results and benefits of key technologies and organisations and process approaches in managing complexity.

The responding companies compete in industrial electronics (41%), wireless communications (29%), design services (25%), computer peripherals (19%), data storage (15%), medical devices (14%), desktop PCs (7%) and optical devices (4%).