Use of state of the art ECAD design tools in highinnovative studies

ECAD techniques are indispensible in the design of electronic boards and micro-electronics. Students - tomorrow's young professionals in electronics design and engineering - should have the opportunity to study and work with these techniques. An integrated approach to combine design, functional verification, signal integrity, board layout and system-on-chip design is necessary for fast and first-time-right design. This paper presents a case study in which students were able to design, build and test a complex 4-layer PCB-board in a small time-slot of only 6 weeks with a Spartan 3AN FPGA with flash memory on board. The goal of the design is to provide a base board for digital system design.