For any embedded board, especially high power boards, it is important to understand how the PCB behaves when used at full power. Engineers shall be interested in knowing the electrical behavior of the power distribution on the PCB. The power distribution area is called the PDN which stands for Power Delivery Network. Knowing the PDN performance is possible through Power Integrity (PI) Analysis. PI analysis uses electromagnetic field solvers using the Maxwell equations as base. Some of the capabilities of Power Integrity tools are:
- Analyzing the DC drop in the power plane. We can actually probe the various points of the power network on the PCB using the PI tools
- Understanding the current density in the power rails and across planes
- Impedance of the PDN
- Transient analysis of a particular rail (Ripple)
Power Integrity can be done pre-layout and post-layout as well.
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