Printed Circuit Design & Fab - May 2008 - (Page 8)

AROUND THE WORLD EDITED BY KATHY NARGI-TOTH Volunteers Honored for Contributions to IPC and Industry BANNOCKBURN, IL – The IPC pre- RF DESIGN ENABLED Mentor, Agilent Team Up on RF Design Tool WILSONVILLE, OR AND SANTA CLARA, CA – Mentor Graphics Corp. and Agilent sented 10 Special Recognition, eight Distinguished Committee Leadership and 32 Distinguished Committee Service awards at the IPC Printed Circuits Expo/APEX and the Designers Summit, held April 1-3 in Las Vegas. The awards were presented to individuals who made significant contributions to IPC and industry by lending their time and expertise to committees and standards and programs development. The 50 awards were presented to individuals and companies during an awards luncheon on Mach 31. A complete listing of the award recipients can be found at pcdandf.com/cms/cms/ content/view/4512/95/. POSITIVE GROWTH Technology Inc. announced the release of a jointly developed design tool that will improve productivity for the design of RF circuits on PCBs. Cycle time reduction of 50% is expected along with an improvement in mixed technology designs. This integrated solution targets mixed-signal designers, enabling RF, analog and digital designs to be worked on concurrently using Mentor’s Expedition Enterprise or Board Station integrated with Agilent’s Advanced Design System (ADS) EDA software for RF design and simulation. According to Mentor and Agilent, this new tool will enable the removal of the often tedious and error prone manual operation of RF design and simulation and replacing it with a seamlessly integrated tool that will improve the commercialization process for mixed-signal designs. The automation and linking of the mix-signal design environment will reduce time to market, lower overall design cost and reduce risk through the reduction of respins. More RoHS Restrictions? RoHS Follow up ‘Arbitrary and Capricious,’ Claims IPC BANNOCKBURN, IL – With the industry still reeling in some circles from the aftershocks of the RoHS Directive, a proposed list of nearly 50 additional substances has touched off an uproar over Europe’s apparent desire to obliterate modern electronics. For the most part, the industry has been quiet – or perhaps unaware – of this latest go-around. In the latest volley, IPC is calling on the organization charged with assessing potentially hazardous substances for possible inclusion in supplemental legislation to the RoHS Directive to table its efforts until further scientific evidence is available to support a ban. In a letter dated March 27, Fern Abrams, director of government relations and environmental policy, called the Öko-Institut’s preliminary list of substances “arbitrary and capricious” and “with little or no scientific basis.” The effects of RoHS, she noted, have had multiple unintended consequences that in fact could actually cause more environmental damage than did the widespread use of the now-banned substances. The European Union assigned the Norway-based Öko-Institut (oeko.de) to expand the list of substances covered by RoHS. In turn, the group identified 46 additional substances for regulation, among them nickel, beryllium, gallium arsenide, liquid crystals and rosin (as in rosin flux). (A full list is at http:// hse-rohs.oeko.info/index.php?id=3.) The impact of a ban on such a wide range of materials would be far-reaching and potentially devastating to the world’s electronics market. Rosin is used in flux; liquid crystals in all sorts of displays; gallium arsenide crystals are found in phones, optical networking and wireless LAN; and nickel is used for plating in a host of applications. IPC historically has been reluctant to mix in what are seen as Europe’s affairs. A former government relations director at IPC told this reporter that pressure from groups outside Europe tends to backfire, and the association did not attempt to coordinate actions against the RoHS Directive banning lead and other substances, which went into effect in July 2006. EDA Consortium Reports 6.7% Growth in Q4 07 SAN JOSE, CA – The EDA Consortium Market Statistics Service (MSS) announced that the electronic design automation (EDA) industry revenue for Q4 2007 grew 6.7% to $1,6 billion, versus $1,5 billion in Q4 2006. The average growth rate over the last four quarters, as compared to the prior year, was 9.1%. Companies that were tracked employed 27,563 professionals in Q4 2007, up 7.7% from the 25,586 employed in Q4 2006. “The reported worldwide EDA industry showed continued growth in Q4 2007, with double digit growth in Japan and the rest of [the] world,” said Robert Gardner of the EDA Consortium. “Overall industry revenue increased relative to both Q4 2006 and the four quarter moving average. EDA employment has seen steady growth over the course of 2007.” 8 PRINTED CIRCUIT DESIGN & FAB MAY 2008 http://pcdandf.com/cms/cms/content/view/4512/95/ http://pcdandf.com/cms/cms/content/view/4512/95/ http://oeko.de http://hse-rohs.oeko.info/index.php?id=3 http://hse-rohs.oeko.info/index.php?id=3

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

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - May 2008 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI EMC For the Real World PCB East Conference Brochure Positive Plating Don't Let your Signals Stub Their Toes Improve PCB Layout With Skill Utility Programs The Next Generation Design Tool Challenge Thermally Conductive Microwave Materials PCB Dielectric Degradation in Lead-Free Assembly Applications A Tale of Two Trade Shows Eliminating Board Defects Off the Shelf Marketplace Ad Index BGA Bulletin

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - May 2008

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