Case Study: Cavium achieves 4X faster timing closure on high-speed interfaces with Cadence Design Systems' Allegro TimingVision

4X Faster Timing Closure on High-Speed Interfaces with Allegro TimingVision Environment

Cavium, a developer of high‑performance semiconductor processors with global design teams, faced growing schedule pressure as its Post‑Silicon Validation team manually routed complex, multi‑layer evaluation boards for high‑speed SerDes and DDRx interfaces. Critical signal routing was time‑consuming—taking 8–12 weeks per board—making it difficult to keep up with increasing design volume and to provide customers with routable pin‑outs.

Cavium adopted Cadence’s Allegro TimingVision within Allegro PCB Designer, along with Allegro Constraint Manager and auto‑interactive routing tools (AiDT/AiBT/AiTR), to get real‑time, color‑coded timing feedback and automated delay tuning. The change cut timing closure time by 4X (examples: four DDR3 channels in under four days vs. four weeks; two‑channel DDR in two days vs. two weeks), enabled faster what‑if analysis with fewer layers, and let the team handle more boards without adding staff or sacrificing quality.

Cavium

Bill Munroe

Principal PCB Designer