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Being a HW digital designer, timing is everything :)

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Question: As a professional hardware designer, what software/packages do you generally recommend for high-end EDA? I've played around with KiCAD/NgSPICE, Altium, and MultiSim/Utilboard, but I'm really curious as to what the "Big Boys" use and what differences there are in performance and features.

Hi, I am a professional FPGA designer. I used to be a board designer many years ago, and most of the time I used the tools from Mentor Graphics. Only when I worked for a startup I used Orcad who, compared to Mentor Graphics, was really in another (much lower) league. The differences between Mentor Graphics and Orcad (15 years ago, when I was still a board designer) were many: Processing speed, integration between schematics entry, constraint management and layout tools, etc.

Have you worked with any tools from Synaptics or Keysight?

Are they're any other tools (whether by brand or purpose) that you consider important to your work as an FPGA or board designer that are more obscure or don't get enough attention?

No, I haven't. And for your second question, I don't think that the tools I use are obscure or don't get enough attention.

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