KiPI

KiPI is a free power-integrity tool for people who design circuit boards: it answers questions like whether a power trace is thick enough, how much voltage a chip pin will lose, and where a board will run hot — without paying for expensive commercial software. The repository has 89 stars, and version 1.0 stable shipped at the end of October 2026.

It covers three analyses: DC voltage drop, from a regulator all the way to each load pin; AC impedance, checking whether a decoupling-capacitor network stays stable across frequencies; and coupled noise, checking whether a switching regulator's noise leaks onto nearby signal nets. Each analysis ends with a clear pass/fail verdict, so over-limit spots are easy to find.

There are two ways to use it: as a KiCad 9 or 10 plugin that analyses the board you already have open, or as a standalone app that opens KiCad board files, ODB++ jobs or HyperLynx files. Results can be inspected in a rotatable 3D view showing voltage, current density, via currents and board temperature, and exported as an interactive HTML report or a PDF.

Three things to know: the plugin mode needs KiCad 9 or 10, while standalone mode needs a board file of your own; the results are simulations, so they are only as good as the models you feed in; and it runs on Windows, Linux and macOS, with the launcher handling the Python setup itself — though the first launch needs internet access to install dependencies.