Printed Circuit Design & Fab - August 2008 - (Page 19)

engineer/designer – are providing multiple headaches for many people, there is a third variable that creeps into the picture just when the CAD manager thinks he’s finally on his way: hardware. Software performance is improved to handle the complex design; higher-level engineers and designers are put on the project and told to move forward… and suddenly they find that their older computers no longer have the processing power to handle this new project. The engineer and designer first complain that the software is too slow, and we receive yet another phone call from an irate CAD manager telling us that our software is still not satisfactory. But after we have exhausted our efforts improving our software to pristine conditions, we are forced to take a deep breath and calmly ask the manager what kind of hardware he’s running. More often than not, we are in the position of recommending that he add some RAM, maybe consider dual or quad-core processors, and on and on. Once again, we are racing against the ever-expanding envelope and everyone is pointing fingers at each other to get on the ball. The challenges we face in this industry are never simple enough to blame on one area (fiGurE 1). We are in a rat race against ourselves, where we are improving our products and supplying the demand at breakneck speed. Software, designer and hardware alike are racing against each other like electrons in a semiconductor. The limits of our capabilities have become our own slow fingers and our tools, not the actual concepts we devise. Just look at the cell phone industry, which builds upon what’s been done before at a pace so fast that the cell phones in our hands are obsolete models before the service contract even expires. We have transcended the world of the physical and entered the world of the logical, or the intellectual, to the point where our industry is turning out products that are light years more sophisticated than the hand-held slide rule used to create them a mere twenty years ago. We are caught in the beautiful result of free trade and capitalism, and while our challenges cause us headaches and stress, we should proudly accept those headaches as the consequence of operating at such high levels of efficiency. Our industry is faced with so many problems that need solving. However, while we’re solving them, we should not overlook the fact that we are leading the world to new frontiers with each minute effort to improve a product -- to better the software used to design the product, or to hone our own ability to design and manufacture that product. While software vendors, managers and designers point fingers at one another for not keeping up with this exhausting sprint, the very act of singling out one area as a weak link raises expectations across the board. After all, once our software is performing at peak levels, isn’t it now the designer and the hardware that seems slow? pcd&f abby Monaco is product manager with Intercept Technology Inc. and can be reached at Abby_Monaco@intercept.com AUGUST 2008 printEd circuit dEsign & faB 19 http://www.wssi.com/pcdm http://www.wssi.com/pcdm

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Printed Circuit Design & Fab - August 2008

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - July 2008 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI Tip Jar Software Performance Interconnect Strategies Final Finish Forum Product Development Challenges in a Global Market Innovative Modeling Supports Co-Design of the Power Supply Chain, Part 2 Low-Loss Fluoropolymer Copper Clad Laminate Qualifying PCBs Outsourced in Asia Copper Plating and Microvia Fill for Advanced PCBs Off the Shelf Marketplace Ad Index BGA Bulletin

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - August 2008

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