ginngi engineering

Electronic boards are the building blocks of today's modern world making their way into virtually every consumer, industrial and military product. Ginngi takes a professional approach to all board designs from the simplest microcontroller to the most complex high-speed board to ensure that not only will the board work as a prototype in the lab, but that it will be manufactureable, cost-effective and fully documented. Leveraging Ginngi's extensive board design experience and depending on the design, it is possible to have a working board in as little as eight weeks.

Lifetime of a Typical Board Design Project

Requirements Analysis

In this phase the customer requirements are defined. Often the requirements have not been sufficiently established by the customer for a design to start. Marketing may or may not have a complete MRD (Marketing Requirements Document). Ginngi will sit with your marketing and engineering staff to establish the exact functional requirements and expectations of the board. An engineering requirements document (ERD) will be written by Ginngi that will clearly specify the expected functional requirements. The ERD will then be reviewed and signed off by the customer before design can start.

Architectural Design

Once requirements have been established an architectural analysis will be performed. Components will be investigated and different approaches will be considered. Performance and cost will be traded off to come up with an optimal and balanced approach. If an FPGA is part of the board its functional blocks will also be mapped out at this time so that a complete system architectural block diagram can be drafted. If computing or signal processing is included then a study will be made to determine which technology would be optimal trading off between DSP, FPGA, CPU or analog.

Software requirements will be investigated and reviewed to determine the required resources to include on the board and to serve as the basis for the software design analysis.

Deliverables: An architectural design document (ADD) will be drafted and presented at the Preliminary Design Review. Results from the review will be used to updated the ADD and upon approval it will be signed of by the customer.

Detailed Design

In this phase the board will be designed so that prototypes can be manufactured and tested. Components are chosen, manufacturer's documentation is collected and a clear picture of the design starts to emerge. Data flow analysis is performed to ensure that each component on each data path is able to transform the data and keep up with system performance requirements.

Analog interfaces are designed. Signal conditioning circuits are designed and ADC/DAC converters selected.

Software is also analyzed and designed. An OS may be selected (e.g. Linux), drivers and other user-modules may be defined. An API (application programmer's interface) may be defined.

Deliverables: A Hardware Design Document (HDD) is drafted describing the board's design in detail and is used by the hardware engineer to implement the design. It will cover each of the blocks to be implemented defining the functional requirements, any components that have been selected, design recommendations and/or links to manufacturer's recommendations. A Detailed Design Review is conducted with the customer team. The HDD is then updated and signed off by the customer.

Design Implementation

Schematics are drawn up, usually in a hierarchical fashion, and its net list thoroughly checked for correctness. As the schematics are drawn critical nets are defined for the PCB phase. This would include clocks, data busses, sensitive signal groups (such as DDR data) and analog signals requiring special care.

A complete Bill of Materials (BOM) is generated detailing the exact part numbers, at least one vendor source, and its purchase price.

If an FPGA is on the board its design will be conducted as a separate project; however, its pin-out will be established during this phase so that schematics can be closed.

The software implementation consists of kernel testing, BSP (Board Support Packagage) including custom device drivers, user-modules such as Linux processes, APIs (application programmer's interfaces) and possible GUI development. In addition to customer software a comprehensive set of diagnostics are also written, which will be used both for engineering validation of the design and for manufacturing testing.

JTAG/ICT Testability Design

Many of today's digital boards use components that have JTAG interfaces. Ginngi designs test fixtures that use these interfaces to test the physical nets on a board after assembly. This is done by using a specialized JTAG exerciser that is able to communicate with JTAG chain and put the devices in a test mode that bypasses the normal function of the device's pins and provides access to the pins themselves. The nets are then driven by one device and measure by a second device effectively testing the net on which the pin is connected. In this way it is possible to perform exact manufacturing testing for each assembled board.

Ginngi can include this in your board's requirements.

PCB Layout

Once the schematics are closed the PCB phase begins. The engineer will draft a PCB Requirements Document (PCBRD), which details the instructions for the PCB designer and will include: PCB stackup, critical nets and groups, clock definitions, analog routing instructions, impedance matching definitions, decoupling, etc.

For a detailed description of our PCB Layout Services refer to: www.ginngi.com/services/PCBLayout

During this phase prototype parts are ordered.

Assembly

In this phase the boards are assembled and built by an electronics manufacturing company and reflect the kind of quality to be expected during larger-volume manufacturing.

An assembly kit is put together with all of the parts and PCB together with detailed assembly instructions.

Engineering Testing

In this phase the boards are brought up to its full functional state. All components are tested, FPGA is loaded, and software is used to exercise, debug and validate each of the board's functions.

Engineering Validation

The engineering validation phase is among the most critical phases in the design. Here the board's parameters are critically measured and compared to original expectations. An engineering validation report is generated documenting all of the measurements as collected by lab instruments. Diagnostics software is run and its report is also included in the final report.

Customer Integration

In this phase typically three working prototypes are delivered to the customer. Ginngi will work with the customer to integrate the board into the customer's system.

Final Documentation and Release

Depending on the licensing arrangements a Manufacturing File and a Design File is provided to the customer. See Documentation section above for details.