OnTrack: The PCB Design Podcast

The OnTrack Podcast welcomes Zaheer Ali, manager of safety, quality, and software product assurance for NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Zaheer is a research physicist specializing in electron transport and nuclear radiation detection and has a background as a MEMS engineer. He co-founded the National Center for Nuclear Security while working at the US Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site. Zaheer shares his wealth of experience with our listeners and offers some sage advice to Electrical Engineers as we move toward a more modular, degradable, interconnected world.

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Show Highlights

• Zaheer Abbas Ali is a research physicist by education and training, specializing in electron transport and nuclear radiation detection, but while pursuing his education, he also took a tremendous number of Electrical and Nuclear Engineering classes. 
• Zaheer has over 10,000 hours "in the fab" and spent part of his career consulting as a micro/nano device (MEMS) engineer.
• While working for the US Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site, Zaheer co-founded the National Center for Nuclear Security.
• Zaheer also worked a two year assignment as Principal Investigator and Shot Director at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics of the University of Rochester. 
• Zaheer currently works as the Product Assurance Manager for SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a project made possible through NASA’s partnership with the German Aerospace Center (also known as Deutsches Zentrum für Luft, or DLR). 
• We know what SOFIA stands for, but what is SOFIA exactly?
  SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft which carries a reflecting telescope into the stratosphere at 38,000-45,000 feet, putting is above the vast majority of our planet’s infrared-blocking atmosphere. This provides a means for astronomers to study our skies in ways that are simply not possible using ground-based telescopes. 
• SOFIA’s  ability to fly above the troposphere, gives it access to a vew which is unobstructed by water and aerosols, so transmission is 99.99%!
• Zaheer also works with USRA (University Space Research Association), the subcontractor to NASA AMES Research Center, which is located in Mountain View, California.
• At DesignCon, Zaheer’s discussion focused on his colleague’s work on SOFIA, in a talk titled ‘Microships in Space: How Device Design Enables Amazing Astronomy’.
• Zaheer also served on a panel at DesignCon, discussing ‘How Device Design can Drive Progress in Industry 4.0’.
• Zaheer’s advice to EEs is to, moving forward, focus on modularity and upgradeability on the hardware side—these are critical for the longevity of systems and capabilities, and he believes demand for these features from commercial and consumer spaces will only increase as time goes on. 
• Zaheer also notes the additional trend in which the number of IoT devices an average person interacts with on a daily basis will increase by an order of magnitude over the next 5-10 years, placing a huge emphasis on board and device design for IoT.
  

Resources:

Zaheer Linkedin
www.SOFIA.usra.edu
Helium Hydride SOFIA
SOFIA reveals new view of Milky Way
www.AixiaGlobal.com
www.llnl.gov
www.dhs.gov
NASA Spinoff
Article featuring Orbit Fab’s Space Gas Station
In God we trust, Everyone else, bring data.

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Mike Creeden joins the OnTrack Podcast to discuss his newly launched non-profit organization, the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCE-A), whose mission is “to empower you, the Printed Circuit Engineering Professional”. Mike is a board designer who began his career working in the automotive industry, and has since, in addition to maintaining a lucrative career, served on the IPC Designer’s Council. Join us and learn more about this organization for PCB designers.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

• Mike began his career in the Midwest, designing boards for the automotive industry. He became an officer of the local chapter of the IPC Designer’s Council, serving as a Communications and Education Officer, and eventually started his own Design Service Center, which offered a more well-rounded experience than he felt he could get working for CAD vendors and designing products for OEMs over the years.
• Since selling his Design Service Center business, he’s been working with EPTAC and IPC as a CID Instructor, teaching CID and CID+, and is currently designated a Master IPC Instructor.  
• Mike has donated nearly a thousand hours to the collective EPTAC effort, part of which includes the task of rewriting the CID+ training manual!
• Within the last year, Mike has also taken a position as a Technical Director of Design Education with Insulectro, North America’s leading Isola and Dupont distributor. 
• “IPC is an Us, not a Them”: So, if you know your craft, you’re more than welcome to join!
• At the start of 2020, Mike launched a new design organization called PCE-A—Printed Circuit Engineering Association—in response to the dissolution of the IPC Designer’s Council. Printed Circuit  Engineering Association will be a non-profit, 501C6-type organization that is free to join, and their affiliated groups will be, for example, PCE-OC for Orange County, or PCE-SD, or PCE-RTC (the research triangle). 
• The purpose of the PCEA is to empower you, the Printed Circuit Engineering Professional, to improve your career and truly bring value to your company - there’s nothing to be sold here!
• Visit PCE-A.org for more information

Links and Resources:

IPC APEX 2020 Highlights
IPC APEX Expo 2021
IPC Designer Certification Program
PCB Design Certifications and Learning Programs with Ben Jordan

Dr. Masha Petrova is on the show to discuss the launch of a mini-documentary series called Altium Stories. Altium Stories is a brand new YouTube series which highlights today’s innovators and designers; people who are out there making astonishing, cutting-edge technology that will impact our world in significant ways. Before becoming Vice President of Brand Marketing at Altium, Masha earned a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of California San Diego. Meet Masha Petrova, one of the people at the helm of the new mini-documentary series Altium Stories and learn more about her personal story.

Watch the Video, Click Here.

Show Highlights:

• Masha grew up in Moscow, Russia, before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Her mother was a doctor and her father was a Chemist. But maybe even more notable, given Masha’s background, her grandfather was an Aerospace Engineer during the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States, and he was even involved in developing the orbit for Sputnik: Earth’s very first artificial satellite. 
• Sputnik’s resounding success triggered the Space Race, which inspired the formation of NASA less than a year later.
• During the Soviet era, Russian Science Fiction had reached new literary heights and was in its ‘Golden Age’. Masha notes that she was a major fan of the genre, and that Science Fiction even influenced her decision to become an Aerospace Engineer: “There were no computers, no iPads when I was growing up—no food half the time really—so there was a lot of reading that I could do… and I decided when I was six, that I was going to be an Astronaut or Cosmonaut and then move here [to the United States].” 
• Masha earned a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of California San Diego. 
• Regarding her move from engineering to marketing, Masha elaborates, providing a unique insight into what unites the seemingly disparate fields, and why she finds it challenging. 
• Altium has just launched a new YouTube channel called ‘Altium Stories’, which is specifically dedicated to telling the stories of Altium’s users and customers, showcasing their innovations and contributions in mini-documentary format. 
• While meant for industry professionals—engineers, designers, etc.—Altium Stories are family-friendly, and Masha says they’ve even served as inspiration for her own kids.
• Currently featured on Altium Stories are mini-docs from companies like Core Wellness, which designs technology around meditation—a haptic feedback device which can sense your electrocardiogram through your thumbs, and provide information about changes in your autonomic nervous system while you meditate. And VPI Technology Group, a Salt Lake City-based company which designs a small form-factor radiation detection device used by public safety and law enforcement agencies.  We also hear from VOX Amplification Ltd., maker of VOX amplifiers, a mainstay in the Beatles’ music equipment. Not only is there more, but there’ll be more mini-documentaries added every month. The next innovative technology featured on the series could be your own!
• If you’re an Altium customer who would like to be featured in Altium Stories, please reach out! Share your story, showcase your projects, or get your product out there. Masha can be contacted directly at Masha.Petrova (at) altium.com.

Links and Resources:

Altium Stories Youtube Channel
Houston Mechatronics Aquanaut - Underwater Robot
Masha Petrova on LinkedIn
Confessions of a Hacker, Joe Grand

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Show Highlights:

• Steve will do several talks at DesignCon this year, including a full-day ‘Power Integrity Bootcamp.’ This year’s Bootcamp will be very exciting—Keysight will provide ADS’ for everyone to have live simulation in the room!
• Steve’s session on Measuring Oscilloscope Voltage Probe Performance will include a demonstration of Picotests’ Gallium nitride probe calibrator, as well as two ways to accurately measure scope probes.
• Steve will also be involved in two sessions for the youngsters: ‘How to Jumpstart your Career’, and he’ll also sit on the ‘Stump the Experts Panel’. 
• Changes in the industry have been dramatic over the years—these days it’s all about PCB effects. The biggest impact is in automotive. Boards are very complicated, and engineers are overloaded; they want answers, and the answers are coming. To that end, we discuss why Steve is excited to be part of an upcoming solution for the future. 
• Today, everything is interconnected; yet most simulators don’t include a voltage regulator module, even though that’s the largest source of jitter! In the future, everything will be simulated end-to-end.
• Engineers today also struggle with lowering power supply noise, and voltage regulation is not the answer.   
• Engineers have become too myopic and need to look at their work more holistically. They often don’t understand how their work impacts everyone else.
• Power Engineers are the foundation of noise issues.
• Low frequency is more problematic than high frequency. Noise travels very far, and once you create it, it can continue forever. The lower we make the repetition rate, the more likely it is to cause noise.
• If engineers today don’t understand RF and Microwave and Analog and Power, they are going to become irrelevant.
• The future will require us to optimize everything, just getting it right is no longer going to be sufficient.

Links and Resources:

DesignCon, Jan 28 - 30, 2020
All Steve’s Talks at DesignCon 2020
Books by Steve Sandler
Designing Power for Sensitive Sensitive Circuits
Picotest Website
How Does Power Integrity Affect Overall Signal Integrity? | Steve Sandler at DesignCon 2018
Steven Sandler LinkedIn

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Chris Carlson, Snr FAE at Altium and accomplished Electrical and Electronic Engineer shares the expertise of his 23-year career in development, documentation, manufacturing, application engineering, and customer support. According to an Aberdeen study, 61% of a designer’s time is spent doing non-direct, design-related activities, such as sourcing components, document control, and so much more. Chris is here to help you improve your efficiency and understand how your fab drawings are your quality assurance documents. 

This discussion includes many tips and tricks about version control, auto-routing, consistent project templates, multi-board interface management, and excellent library management. Continue listening or watch the full episode for a treasure trove of tricks and tips you can apply to save time and get your boards right the first time. 

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Show Highlights:

• Design reuse is very valuable to streamlining the design process. Build up a library in your CAD tool of power supplies or interfaces and other parts which you know work well and are purchasable to quickly use in a new design.
• Avoid back-and-forth phone calls or emails by creating templates of all your documentation standards for consistency across all design documents, and provide everything your fabricator and assembler needs the first time.  
• Sit down with your fabricator and assembler to ensure you understand all their documentation requirements. 
• You’d benefit most from having various templates, with different standard note sections for specific types of materials and technologies. Specify items such as impedance-driven widths, and you’ll have a foot to stand on if the board doesn’t work.
• A good trick is, on a small edge of the board, route a few traces according to your impedance specifications. When you get the board back, polish the edge of the board, look at it under a microscope, and measure it to ensure the fabrication process was indeed correct. 
• Getting the layer stack correct is essential. A terrific technique called, ‘stacking stripes’, involves putting a trace of say, 200 mils on the first layer, 400 mils on the second layer, and so on. After polishing the edge, you’ll immediately see if the layers stackup in the correct order. 
• Octopart can benefit greatly with part sourcing. Also, look for several sources that actually have high volume stock. 
• ACTIVEBOM® is an incredible tool that provides information about real-time costs, all manufacturer lifecycles, plus any supply chain issues, as you design. 
• Many eCAD tools such as Git, CVS, and SVN have the capability to plug into version control tools built directly into the UI—use it religiously! This practice provides the entire evolution of your design in the repository and also gives you traceability of who did what, when, and why.
• Designers’ favorite advice from Chris to save time and improve efficiency includes having a UI that interfaces version control, Altium’s automated routing assistant, consistent project templates, multi-board interface management, and excellent library management.
• The cost of not following optimal design cycles could mean the success or failure of a company.

Links and Resources:

Creating Layer Numbers and Stacking Stripes in Altium Designer
PCB Layout Tips: How to Get Your Layer Stack Right - Whiteboard Video
Other resources from Chris Carlson
eCAD Tools for Version Control 
Octopart® 
Altium Designer® Documentation for ActiveRoute

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Signal integrity expert, Dr. Eric Bogatin, joins us in this episode to talk about the upcoming DesignCon conference and expo that will be held in Santa Clara, CA January 28th through January 30th. Dr. Bogatin shares information about the presentations he’ll be giving; this includes a 2-part S-Parameter master class, speed training about understanding TDR measurements, and a session tackling tricks the experts use to get more out of their oscilloscopes, just to name a few. Listen in or watch the full episode!

Check out the show highlights below for some excellent free online design resources on the SI academy website and all the sessions from this year’s AltiumLive.

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Show Highlights:

• Eric explains ‘Rule #9’.
• To add more value while on the expo floor at DesignCon, ‘speed training’ will be available to everyone. These are short, fun, and informal presentations covering one topic or demo. All speed training sessions at DesignCon are free.
• Four of the world’s experts in signal and power integrity—with 150 to 200 years of collective years of expertise between them—will be on stage together in the ‘Stump the Experts’ panel: Steve Sandler, Istvan Novak, Vladimir Dmitriev-Zdorov, and Larry Smith. Be sure to bring your questions and problems to this discussion. 
• Every six months there is a printed version of the Signal Integrity Journal. The latest edition will be distributed at DesignCon 2020. The cover article, ‘The Myth of Three Capacitor Values’, reveals the origins of this design rule for decoupling capacitors, and why it no longer applies.
• On Thursday, Jan 30, an expert panel will untangle the countless digital communication standards. This panel discussion will be of great value to those working with high-speed serial links. 
• Also on Thursday: the Career Zone Session will be an excellent opportunity for young engineers to obtain guidance on the fundamentals of starting out in this industry, followed by networking and individual coaching sessions.
• Eric will also do other speed sessions/demonstrations to increase your understanding of TDR (time-domain reflectometer), and S-Parameter measurement for differentials without a return path. 
• Those unable to attend DesignCon, please take advantage of the Signal Integrity Academy hosted by Teledyne LeCroy. It features a vast collection of free best design practices for signal and power integrity, plus best measurement practices, illustrating four essential principles, including Rule #9.   
• You will also find a series of webinars on the Signal Integrity Academy about the correct usage of a TDR, plus a series on their new network analyzer.
• Eric has a new book on transmission lines in the works, which will be available soon from Artech.
• Teledyne has a new high-performance, low-end scope that is also very low-cost. Look out for his presentation, ‘SI/PI on a Budget: Five Tricks to Get More out of Your Oscilloscope’ at DesignCon (also coming to various other venues in the coming months).
• Be sure to watch the video recordings of Eric’s talks at AltiumLive 2019: ‘Mastering the TDR in 45 Minutes’ and ‘Breaking Bad: A Downside of Open Source Designs.’ 
• Remember to like, subscribe, and tell us what you want to learn about!          

Links and Resources:

Signal Integrity Academy 
DesignCon 2020 
Signal Integrity Journal 
Sign up for Print Version of Signal Integrity Journal & Free Newsletter
Career Zone Session: What’s Next? How to Jumpstart Your Career
New this year, the DesignCon Career Zone
Mastering the TDR in 45 Minutes, Eric Bogatin at AltiumLive 2019
Breaking Bad: A Downside of Open Source Designs, Eric Bogatin AltiumLive 2019
Artech House Publishers (technical book publisher that will publish Eric’s book soon)
Teledyne LeCroy’s TDR and S-Parameter Equipment

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Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Podcast of 2020 with OnTrack. In this edition, we shine a light on one of our design community’s brightest stars, Jeremy Blum. Jeremy is a two-time AltiumLive keynote speaker and has also been featured on this podcast twice. He’s recently released an expanded and updated edition of his book Exploring Arduino, which he originally wrote in 2013. Enjoy a few clips to get to know Jeremy better.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

• Jeremy shares more about the work he does as the Head of Engineering at Shaper Tools
• Is Jeremy a prolific geek, or is he a nerd? 
• More about Jeremy’s YouTube channel
• Jeremy’s first job out of university was at Google, where he helped co-develop Google Glass
• More about the updated and expanded edition of ‘Exploring Arduino’
• We are giving away two signed copies of Jeremy’s book as a thank you for the input we receive from our users. Let us know what you’d like to learn about, and who you’d like to see on the OnTrack Podcast in the year ahead.

Links and Resources:

Exploring Arduino Hard Copy 
Exploring Arduino PDF 
Jeremy Blum YouTube

Want to qualify to win one of two signed copies of Jeremy’s book, Exploring Arduino? Please comment on social media using the hashtag #OnTrack Podcast and let us know what people or topics you would like to hear featured on the OnTrack podcast in 2020.

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Welcome the year-end wrap with Ben Jordan, where we’ll discuss routing engines, RF and microwave and high-speed design, and how they differ. We’ll talk about signal integrity, and discuss what 2020 and beyond will hold for design. And lastly, we’ll share some resources and links as our holiday gift to you.   

Watch the video, click here.

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Show Highlights:

• The recent launch of Altium Designer 20® is getting a great response, and one of the most well-received features seems to be the routing engine—specifically the any-angle routing feature. 
• Technically, with previous Altium Designer versions, you could place a trace at any angle, but it involved numerous clicks. And the response to our question ”Why don’t we design at other angles?”, was, once laid down, you couldn’t edit traces any further. That’s the real crux of it.
• The key update to Altium Designer 20 is, now we can have beautiful, flowing traces with tangential arcs—tangential to the trace they come from—and concentric with the object they’re clearing. The real key here is being able to edit after it’s laid down. 
• It takes a lot of time and groundwork to build the algorithms, and it takes a lot of math, testing, and time to build libraries to do things elegantly. 
• Interviews with users revealed that people weren’t using the simulator and there was a need for improvement. 
• With Altium Designer 20, you don’t have to leave the comfort of the schematic environment that you know (which saves time), and the simulation is very fast. One of the themes of the next major release will be virtual prototyping and simulation.
• With the explosion of the IoT market, not everything is necessarily digital and there’s a lot we’ll have to learn. The design process is exceedingly complex and becoming more so. 
• The complexity is not in the manufacturing of the board (other than tolerances). The complexity is in the design. 
• Don’t let complexity fool you into paralysis—just get started. Ben Jordan’s talk, ‘The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to RF Design’, is a great resource. Ben will be presenting the talk again at Design Con, January 28th-30th, 2020, at the Santa Clara Convention Centre, and again at the IPC Apex Expo, February 4th-6th, in San Diego. 
• Q: “RF and microwave are not high-speed, but typically high frequency. Then there’s high-speed digital and high-performance: what does it all mean and what’s the difference?”  A: “High performance refers to anything that does its job exceptionally well, but is not necessarily high-speed. High-speed digital does boil down to frequency in current technology. The signals we’re dealing with now are very high-speed digital, meaning we’re using a higher ‘clock-rate’ (sending more bits of information in less time). The actual speed of a signal in a PCB is where frequency comes in—it’s not clock time, but rather a microwave frequency”. 
• The formal partnership between Simberian and Altium brings an accurate tool for considering all the materials in the layer stackup and the way boards are made, generating a very accurate impedance profile for the traces on the board. This tool works whether you have a high-speed digital board, or an RF board with microstrip transmission lines over Rogers material on the outer layer. 
• The actual delay calculation in Altium Designer 20 comes from Simberian’s static field solver.
• Rick Hartley’s comment at AltiumLive in Frankfurt was very encouraging: “...happy that Altium is doing tune for delay, because that’s the way to do it, rather than length tuning”.
• Altium now has a dedicated development team for simulation, routing, and schematics, paving the way for future enhancements of the user interface.
• Altium has launched something new and exciting: a video series called ‘Altium Stories’ that just tells your stories! Go to YouTube and find some stories now—Ben’s favorite is the Vox Story. 
• The blog by Mark Harris, ‘Geeky Holiday Gift Ideas’, is an amusing read to end the year on a fun note.
• All the AltiumLive sessions are now online.
• As we head into the new decade, PCB designers can look forward to routing boards being faster and easier, can expect more long-awaited automation, more boards in bizarre places (such as wearables, exoskeletons, precision agriculture), and much, much more.
• The role of the PCB designer will change, but it won’t disappear. The newest generation entering the industry will have to be more holistic than previous generations of engineers.  
• Finally, thank you to our listeners for making this year a great one for the OnTrack Podcast.

Links and Resources:

Altium Designer 20: Any angle routing
DesignCon
IPC APEX
Altium Stories + VOX Amplifiers
Geeky Holiday Gift Ideas - Blog by Mark Harris
AltiumLive 2019 Session Links: San Diego
Sarcos Robotics
Altium365

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Simberian makes a physics-based 3D field solver tool that helps measure not only the traces on your board but also the materials. Altium recently entered into a formal partnership with Simberian, and Roger Paje - VP of Global Marketing, discusses with us how this impacted Altium Designer® 19 and 20, and what’s we’ll see going into Altium Designer 21 and beyond.  

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Show Highlights:

• Roger started his career in EDA at a startup in the signal integrity and timing space, called Quad Design, which was eventually acquired into Mentor Graphics. He left EDA for the telecom market and worked on embedded designs for a while. He’s now back in EDA, and the last two companies he worked with used Altium Designer. 
• According to Roger, Altium’s recent partnership with Simberian embodies the synergistic principle that in the business world, “one plus one equals five”. 
• Given Simberian’s background and its contributions to the field since its founding in 2006—its contributions to electromagnetic theory, its multiple case-studies, its rich history of exercises with partners on algorithm validation, and its large library—it is apparent that Simberian is heavily focused on electromagnetic analysis and getting it correct.
• According to Roger, marrying the above “to a PCB tool with a bunch of users… just seems like an extremely logical decision”.
• Altium Designer 19 saw the first inclusion of Simberian features, starting with their field solver in the stackup manager. This ensured more accurate impedance calculations on the different layers. While Altium Designer 19 was just a starting point for these features, 80% of users were able to use the field solution and impedance calculations to their benefit.
• The field solver is extremely accurate and essential for the frequencies that users are now moving toward, and the material loss parameters are included in Altium Designer 20.
• Material measurements are becoming more important with high-speed design. 
• Considering roughness factors and the characteristics of dielectrics; once you get into higher frequencies, 3 GBps is the inflection point at which loss characteristics of the materials come into play—if those aren’t modelled properly, it introduces simulation inaccuracies.
• If board manufacturers do not provide characterization and data, both in pre- and post-manufactured cases, analysis becomes almost impossible. 
• The current collaboration of EDA vendors with designers and material manufacturers makes the industry more complicated than a couple of years ago. 
• With the Altium Designer 20 release comes more robust geometries for those moving into more exotic materials and geometries. There are also a few algorithmic enhancements. Some characterization exercises revealed that the impedance numbers coming out were measurable.
• Most of our regular users are in the realm of transition, moving toward DDR-3, DDR-4 and onward, or any of the surreal interfaces, PCI Express, Gen 2 or -3, moving up to Gen 4.  
• The practical impact and importance of Altium Designer 20 to PCB designers will be, accurate impedance and delay calculations. Even at DDR-3 skew is a big deal and as you go higher, even more so.
• As designers move toward high speeds, proper impedance modelling is important and we have a lot of confidence in Altium Designer 20 for that with the field solver.
• Designers will always benefit from knowing their Electrical Design Rules. The layout tool itself is able to find things that impact signal integrity. Some of the design rule checks in Altium Designer 20, particularly the return path checking, will ease the job of analysis.
• Designers will need less hard-core training to read modeling results and know how to interpret them with the more intuitive nature of Altium Designer 20.
• The future of the Simberian/Altium partnership already has a couple of philosophies in place, one of them is making the analysis easier. There are also plans for a trace checker, similar to a word processor’s spell checker.             

Links and Resources:

Introduction of Simbeor® Electromagnetic Signal Integrity in Altium Designer 20 (in Altium Designer 20 User Manual)

Visit Simberian Website

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Patrick Züger from GPV Switzerland, a massive fabricator and assembly facility across Europe and China, delivered a great talk at AltiumLive in Europe. He shares his feedback and design process with and as an Altium Designer® Beta User. We discuss his initial impressions of Altium Designer 20.

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Show Highlights:

• As a CID+ Hardware/PCB designer in a global EMS company, Patrick sees many PCB designs and has created a workflow for Altium Designer, which he presented at AltiumLive in Europe.
• Many EMS companies have brought in designers to work alongside Project Managers. This close collaboration with the production side has vast benefits in production and assembly.
• GPV has approximately 4000 employees worldwide with locations in Mexico, Europe, Asia, China, Sri-Lanka, and Czechoslovakia. Most sites are for manufacturing, with the biggest one in Sri-Lanka, plus two engineering facilities in Switzerland. 
• As one of the ten biggest manufacturers in Europe, GPV produces numerous products, from medical to consumer electronics and industrial products.
• There was excellent feedback and interest in Patrick’s workflow template which he is sharing freely.
• Patrick has been an Altium Beta user for seven years—the most significant benefit to which is being close to the developers and seeing his ideas implemented.
• Q: “How would you describe the significance of Altium Designer 20 compared to other releases?”

• A: “It is a refinement of Altium Designer 18 and the new concept of Altium. New features such as the updating of the routing engine, new schematic render, and dynamic compiler are important.”

• Q: “How long have you been using Altium Designer 20 as a Beta User now?”

• A: “About six to eight weeks.”

• Q: “What are the top three improved features?”

• A: “My favorite is the routing improvement. It’s much easier to move around different tracks and rearrange them, making the work proceed much faster. Next favorite is the dynamic compilation, and also something I’ve waited for a long time is the creepage rule—I was very happy to see it.”

• Q: “What do you think about the stability of Altium Designer 20?”

• A: “Even in Beta, I feel it’s very good, very stable, and I already use it for small designs.” 

• Q: “Give us five words that describe the interactive routing.” 

• A: “Impressive, intelligent, fast, forward-thinking, and smooth.”

• Q: “How would you compare the interactive routing of Altium Designer 20 with any other tool you’ve used in the past or present?”

• A: “That’s difficult to answer because I only use Altium Designer - for me, it’s the best tool.”

• Q: “What is the number one quality that helps your design flow and workflow in Altium Designer 20?” 

• A: “For me, it’s the clean up of the component properties panel in the schematic, the overview is much better now.”

• Q: “What is the number one time-saving feature in Altium Designer 20?” 

• A: “The efficiency of the new routing engine, before I’d have to delete all tracks and start over, but now I can rearrange them.” 

• Q: “What do you feel has not been addressed, that we should address?”

• A: “The outshop files where you configure your settings to get the data out haven’t had much done to them for some time, and I think there’s room for more efficiency and automation.” 

• Q: “How significant do you think the tune for delay feature is, and does that impact you?”

• A: “It does not affect me directly as we don’t have many high-speed designs, but it makes much more sense.”  

• Q: “With the release of Altium Designer 20, do you think there’s any type of board that our tool cannot address?”

• A: “No, I don’t think so. Maybe one area is with huge boards, where Altium Designer does tend to be a bit slow, but Altium Designer can handle any normal design.”

• Q: “What top three features of Altium Designer in general, sets it apart from other design tools?”

• A: “The 3D capabilities, the ACTIVEBOM® with the manufacturer part search, I love that feature. It’s awesome, and of course the new routing engine.”

• Q: “You say you grew up with Altium Designer, but you have a choice what tool you use, what keeps you choosing this tool over others?”

• A: “Firstly its ease of use, the 3D capabilities, the beta program, the big community, for example, all our educational institutions use Altium Designer. I think it’s the best value for money, and very importantly Altium listens to their users.”  

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Trade In Your Outdated PCB Design Tool & Unlock Savings on Altium Designer today!

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Show Highlights:

• Justin has been with TE’s high-speed data development group for 11 years, and as the Principal Development SI Engineer, develops high-speed products—both connectors and cables for use in the data center market. 
• Nathan is a technologist on the system architecture team responsible for managing their industry standards efforts. He’s been with TE for what he calls “an embarrassing 38 years”. 
• Between 2014 and 2018, the industry standard for high-speed connectivity rose dramatically; from 25 GBps to 50 GBps, with the estimated launch of 100 GBps in 2021. A major factor driving these improvements is demand—such as the many ways people are using data (for example, ‘killer apps’).
• A vast range of technological challenges arise due not only to increasing speed but also due to heightening bandwidth but also density.
• There’s a high demand for higher-speed products which have to function at higher frequencies and send more data per unit of time, so more channels, systems, and actual bitstreams must be packed into the same space.
• With increasing data rates come new sensitivities to impairment or signal degradation. This problem manifests itself in the form of insertion loss: how far you can send the signal before it’s lost?
• Within a connector or PCB, transitions occur from the connector to the PCB or from one layer of the PCB to another, and those transition structures increase loss by introducing reflections that cause a loss of signal, affecting reach even further.
• Another problem with higher data rates is crosstalk. With multiple channels, each sending data while sitting side-by-side, one creates noise for the other.  
• Density issues also come about as the data rate increases—silicon providers are increasing the number of transmitters and receivers they can put into a device, which requires higher density, and again, creates more crosstalk.
• At the PCB level, there’s usually an active device sending a signal to the PCB trace, which is a significant electrical length, and although copper is a great conductor, the actual printed material is lossy, and there’s a migration to different laminate materials as well as smoother copper. 
• With the notable trend towards smaller via holes, the structures themselves are both low in impedance, which creates extra reflections as well as electrical noise or crosstalk. 
• TE understands the market trends of laminates and how they can interlock different technologies and use the advantages of materials to provide higher density and higher performing interconnects.
• Different modulation techniques are also required; not only to push the bandwidth at which a device functions electrically, but also to create an even lower crosstalk profile. All of this requires considerable optimization at the PCB level.
• To address these seemingly insurmountable challenges, TE is constantly upping their game in human resources and the tools they use in concert with industry ecosystem partners who provide board layout tools and powerful signal integrity modeling tools. 
• On the board side, the next-gen materials are moving toward an EPO resin with a dielectric constant of around 3 and lower loss. 
• The movement in connectors is toward a different family of plastics. Instead of PCB-type laminate materials, injection-molded thermoplastics are used, such as high-end engineering polymers like LCP.     
• On the metal side, high-performance copper alloys that are very springy are applied to create a denser interface. 
• Different extrusion technologies are used for cabling to increase reach and density while minimizing loss. 
• Products that are helping solve problems en route to 100 GBps are: internal cabling assemblies (instead of PCB routing) to overcome loss, new interconnect technology and much more. 
• This podcast’s takeaway for the industry is that the robust solutions will exist and TE will help with the introduction. Things are going to change whether it be removing traces in favor of cabling or overcoming thermal problems. Get ready for 100 gigs, it’s coming and it’s going to work!    

Links and Resources:

• Connectivity System Challenges of Next-Gen I/O Paper 
  • Presentation 
• Delivering 100 Gbps Solutions for Chip-to-Module and DAC Paper
  • Presentation 
• STRADA Whisper Connectors Landing Page, 
• STRADA Whisper Connectors Routing Guide:  
• STRADA Whisper Connectors: Beyond 25 Gbps Whitepaper
• Cabled Backplane Systems: The High-Speed Alternative to PCBs Whitepaper 
• Sliver Connectors & Cable Assemblies Landing Page: 
• Sliver for SFF-TA-1002 Video
• Data Center Solutions Landing Page
• TE at DesignCon 2019 Highlights  (includes all demo videos)
• High-Speed Pluggable I/O Connectors & Cages 
• High-Speed Pluggable I/O Cable Assemblies 
• 400G I/O Connector Landing Page 
• LGA Sockets Landing Page
• XLA Sockets Product Flyer

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Mark Ross is a long-time Altium Beta user and our guest in this podcast episode to share his insights and the value he gets from being a Beta user. He also chimes in on a long list of questions about what he thinks of Altium Designer 20. He gets into the details on this latest release of Altium Designer and what sets it apart from other eCAD packages, the most significant new feature, and - are there any designs the tool can’t handle? Listen in, read the notes, or watch the video below to find out.

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Show Highlights:

• At age seven Mark took apart his first CB radio, setting the tone for what would become a lucrative career. He has now been designing circuit boards for 32 years. Beginning with Protel Easytrax, he progressed and moved on to other tools. When Altium acquired Accel in 2000, Mark moved over to Altium Designer®, which he has been using ever since.
• Mark has been designing power products for Progressive Dynamics, the market leader in RV Power conversion, for almost five years. Before joining their team, their products were exclusively through-hole technology, and he was in charge of converting everything to surface mount.
• Some of their challenges were directly related to 3D capability, and Altium was extremely helpful with component collisions and UL spacing. 
  With the help of Altium Designer, Mark designs a new circuit board every two weeks and does a product revision once a week.
• Q: “How long have you been a Beta User for Altium?”
  A: “Since 2015, and I am a firm believer in it. I believe there is a big disconnect with CAD software users in general, but Altium gives me the opportunity to provide feedback.”
• Q: “How has that experience been for you and what benefits do you see in keeping at it through almost five releases?”
  A: “Firstly, employability—things change so rapidly, you have to stay updated. Also, when our company starts using the latest update, I can help my colleagues, which is very beneficial.”
• Q: “You’ve worked with Altium Designer well in advance of its release, what is your honest opinion of the significance of Altium Designer 20 compared to some of our previous releases?”
  A: “Well I was one of the vocal guys stuck with Altium Designer 17. I did Beta on AD18 and 19 but just couldn’t afford to take the time to learn the new tools fully while also doing my work. When I started using AD20, coming from 17 to 20, 97% of the time, I don’t notice it anymore, the user interface is much smoother and the ease of use is back.”
• Q: “What are your top three favorite new features of AD20?” 
  A: “The interactive router is absolutely amazing...it’s really helping us to make last-minute changes about 40% faster, plus the user interface, and there’s much more. Also, the 3D rendering engine is phenomenal compared to what it was.”
• Q: “What’s your opinion on the stability of AD20 and what is the impact on your day-to-day?” 
  A: Even on the Beta I’ve noticed that it’s pretty stable, overall I have not had the system crashes that I’ve seen in the past.” 
• Q: “How would you compare the interactive routing and any dramatic changes in AD20 to AD17?”
  A:  “The router is amazing, I highly recommend that everyone go to this section of the presentation; the way the router works now is absolutely amazing especially or me typically dealing with 40 to 60 rules—I can get a lot more packed in because of the way the router can now hug around a pad, once you see it, you’ll be blown away.”
• Q: “If you could pick only one thing that has improved your daily design flow, what is the #1 new thing?”
  A: “Other than the router, we’re seriously starting to look at ACTIVEBOM® because that gives us a pulse on the way the industry is going.”
• Q: “Not to be redundant—specific to time savings—you just went from 32-bit to 64-bit, which is a huge time saving, but besides that, what is your biggest time saver?”
  A: “Again, for us, it’s the router.”
• Q: “What do you feel may not have been addressed in Altium 20?”
  A: “I haven’t seen anything in our industry, for the way we use the tool—speaking with other people at AltiumLive though, it seems they are very happy with the differential pair routing improvement.” 
• Q: “Have you played around with the creepage, it sounds like you’re dealing with a lot of high voltage?”
  A: “Yes, thank you very much for that. That was one of the things that was tricky, with worrying about UL spacing, there’s creepage and clearance and we have to address both; having the tool do that for us—that’s going to save us a lot on board spins!”
• Q: “Have you used any other CAD tools during your career, Mike?”
  A: “I have used other tools, that we won’t mention, but it’s always been your tool, and honestly, everyone I’ve worked for, wanted Altium. Most of the jobs I see posted require Altium Designer experience.” 
• Q: “From what you’ve seen in AD20 regarding high-speed digital, do you think there are any designs that the tool can’t handle?”
  A: “No, I have worked with high-speed digital before, and I don’t see anything that the tool can’t handle.”
• Q: “Which three capabilities of Altium Designer as a CAD tool, sets it apart from other CAD packages?” 
  A: “The router, again—I think that router is absolutely fantastic. The capabilities it has, with the 3D, is far better than anything I’ve seen on any other package, and the ACTIVEBOM is another thing where Altium always seems to be one or two steps ahead of everybody else. The other thing that is going to help with collaboration is Altium 365. It removes the disconnect between the designer and everyone else in the process.” 
• Q: “What made you decide to make the switch from AD17, where you’d been hanging for a while, and move onto AD20?”
  A: “When I got into the AD20 Beta program, I was able to start using it immediately, there’s one modal dialogue box that’s not there, but I’m not noticing any difference in the usability. I have switched over completely now.” 
• Q: “What has made you stay with Altium over the years?” 
  A: “Obviously the price point, you guys don’t nickel and dime us. The ability to go on and off maintenance while your software stays intact is very helpful, and you guys are very stable. Also, the fact that you continue to improve the tool.”    

Links and Resources:

Interactive router (video of any angle routing on Linkedin)
See What’s Coming in Altium Designer 20

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Recording from AltiumLive Europe—we have Max Seeley, Lead Electrical Engineer at 3M's Digital Solutions Group and Carl Schattke, Lead PCB Design Engineer from a well-known electrical vehicle manufacturer for a coffee-table chat about the value of attending and being involved with tech conferences like AltiumLive. Max and Carl also share with us how they came up with their presentation ‘Schematic to PCB Design: Passing the Baton Like a Champion’.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

• Carl is a PCB designer with 46 years of experience in a range of high-speed and high-voltage

boards and complex controllers, sensors, and test equipment. He is passionate about teaching design and has been an Altium Designer® user since 1985.

• Max is in the Corporate Research Lab, and part of the Digital Solutions Group at 3M. His group supports the development of high-tech electronics.
• Q: “What is the importance of conferences, self-education and being involved with summits such as AltiumLive and PCB West? How does this serve your career?”
• A: Carl - “Exposure to different points of view and methodologies. CAD tools are complex by nature, with tons of features. When you see how other people do things, usually you’ll pick up ways of doing things to add to your repertoire. Also, making connections with different people increases your value to the community as well as the depth and breadth of your network”.
• A: Max - “Learning where to go to get the right information. I have learned which sources of information to focus on. I learned very valuable things from Carl, while Rick Hartley and Mike Creeden have been profound influencers, and the textbook, Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering, by Henry Ott is a great textbook. It’s really important to ask if there’s a sound scientific explanation for any opinion.”
• Carl and Max delivered a talk called ‘Schematic to PCB Design: Passing the Baton Like a Champion’, here at AltiumLive. It’s a very useful look at the process of moving from schematic to PCB, covering aspects from setting up the schematic to transferring the data to communication and avoiding the pitfalls of the process like a champ. The race is lost when you drop the baton.  
• Max has many tips he gathered over the years and Carl has a collection of questions he believes should always be asked.
• Max believes that doing presentations together presents a fantastic opportunity to learn from one another; also, teaching something forces you to pay more attention to your own process. 
• Professionally, the most valuable skill we have is the ability to ask questions.
• It’s critical in the design process to slow down a little bit. Typically the excitement and adrenaline causes a rush once the schematic is done.
• Methodologies should be adaptable to whatever it is you’re designing and the timeline - we need to be ready to change with a positive mindset.
• Q: “What have the AltiumLive 2019 highlights been?”
• A: Max - “What sets the AltiumLive conference apart is the community.”
• A: Carl - “What I enjoyed the most is meeting new engineers and talking geek stuff about people’s different passions and projects.” 
• Judy loves watching the interaction between students and experienced engineers—it’s a two-way street of inspiration.
• There will be a full recording of Max and Carl’s presentation available online within about a month.

Links and Resources:

• Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering, by Henry Ott
• Tape-Ups shared by Carl at AltiumLive

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Mike Konrad’s passion is educating people about cleaning their boards at assembly. If you care about Design for Reliability (DfR), you’ll learn a lot from this podcast. Mike is President & CEO of Aqueous Technologies, which manufactures, sells, and supports machines that clean circuit boards after reflow, with the goal to remove ionic residue and eliminate the chance of electrochemical migration. He is also a fellow-podcaster; hosting a show called ‘Reliability Matters’. Hear how Mike got his start in the industry and founded Aqueous Technologies and more.

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

• Cleaning is optional for some and mandatory for others - it adds reliability.
• What does ‘cleaning’ mean with regard to  the way a board comes into an assembly house? Every board has a tolerance for residue, unique to its purpose and design. This means it’s virtually impossible to predict what level of contamination each board will have.
• We tell our customers that in controlled conditions, a board may have a substantial tolerance for contamination. However, you should never assume that your board starts at zero, no matter how much care goes into the fabrication or assembly process.
• The implication of dirty boards is mostly ECM (electrochemical migration failures) which manifests in one of three ways: dendritic growth, parasitic leakage, and CAF or CAFF.
• Dendritic growth is where metal crystals on a board grow between conductors, anodes and cathodes, creating shorts and causing the board to lose conductivity. Dendritic growth in a guided missile, for instance, could have disastrous implications. 
• Parasitic leakage is a rise in conductivity and a loss in resistivity, creating a current path, but not enough to cause a dead short  
• CAF (Conductive Anodic Filaments) or CAFF Conductive Anodic Filament Failure, is partially caused by micro-cracks or dry weave between the layers of a board, where the plating solution from the vias and through-holes leach into the cracks
• When considering the application, it’s essential to determine the cost of failure, e.g., a pacemaker...
• When a board catches fire, it’s pretty clear what will happen to the product housing the board.
• The Montreal Protocol was a treaty that got rid of chemicals used to clean circuit boards in 1989. Vapors from solvents and chlorine molecules were damaging the ozone layer and it was ratified by every member nation of the UN, leading to the emergence of low-residue flux (sometimes erroneously called “no-clean flux”).
• Flux is mandatory when soldering to avoid oxidization. Some assemblers turned to more environmentally-friendly cleaning products that weren’t as effective, and the rest got rid of the process.  
• Circuit boards have become denser and smaller, and miniaturization is causing more problems with the no-clean protocol.
• Don’t call it no-clean flux—low-residue flux is much more accurate. 55% of our customers who are running no-clean are cleaning. No-clean doesn’t mean “don’t clean”. Instead, don’t clean what doesn’t require it, but do clean what needs cleaning; it’s as simple as that.
• Mike relates a very telling litigation case in which an OEM couldn’t deliver the goods to its contract manufacturer (due to not fully cleaning contaminants from its boards) and tells us how litigation could have been avoided.
• IPC standards regarding cleanliness have recently been updated. 
• What should designers be demanding in the form of cleanliness? What is the cost of failure, the criticality of the product and its climatic environment? These aspects must be included in the specifications.
• There are third-party companies that will look at your design file and create algorithms to determine its propensity for failure due to residues. It all boils down to clean boards!   

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Lawrence Romine, VP of Corporate Marketing for Altium discusses what new features you can expect from Altium Designer® 20, which will be available later this year.

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Show Highlights:

• Lawrence has been with Altium for almost 15 years. At the time, the move to offshore manufacturing was prevalent and his previous experience with semi-conductors and FPGAs fit in well with Altium’s FPGA strategy. Since then, he has been involved in almost every facet of the business.
• What are the trends in the industry and why is Altium making some of the decisions we are with our product?  Mainly the extreme pressure of speed and meeting intense release dates. More than half of our customers are doing 10 new designs a year and 40% of them are doing more than 25 PCB designs each year.
• This trend brings the rise of the ‘all-purpose engineer’, however, the majority of our customers are Electrical Engineers and due to the complexities and data rates of design, engineers and PCB designers must absorb more of the technical aspects and procurement responsibilities.
• What is Altium doing to absorb these trends and enhance the user experience? Altium is clearly the number one professionally-used PCB design tool. We are now in the space where the user-imperative is paramount, meaning, we must engage with users and are in the process of aligning the entire company with that strategy. 
• We are diligent not to leave our existing customers behind. Some of our power users advised that they aren’t keen on some prior changes, so in Altium Designer 20 you’ll have, for example, a re-factored properties panel.
• The unified design model is coming back and being enhanced in Altium Designer 20, for example, dynamic, automatic compilation.
• The 3-release arc between Altium Designer 18 and Altium Designer 20 includes changing to 64-bit, changing the user interface, the new layer stack manager, and specifically, the materials library and the field solver technology. 
• The star of Altium Designer 20 is undoubtedly interactive routing–and is already being received exceedingly well. What we have now is peerless. 
• The new differential pair capability with its elegance of operation is exceptional, as well as the angle routing which can route any angle.  
• Other aspects of Altium Designer 20 set us up for future development work: the first thing you’ll notice on a very large, dense schematic, is that it will be smoother and panning and zooming are enhanced. 
• The new SPICE simulator was added by user request; all the models you can throw at it should work, but more development is underway.
• We added more advancements to multi-board design, such as ACTIVEBOM®, which now supports all the boards in a multi-board project. 
• 3D PDF support has been enhanced, we added some library migration capability to ease the transition into Concord Pro™. 
• We also added the ability to place components on the mechanical CAD side. 
• If you’re doing high-voltage design, we’ve added some new creepage rules, crossover- and return path rules.
• Where are we with bug fixing? We’ve never neglected it, but perception is a reality for the person who is experiencing an issue, so an area where you will begin to see a significant enhancement is direct engagement in our forums, on the BugCrunch itself, on the ideas forum; as a mandate from the CEO directly.
• Altium Designer 20 is addressing twice as many bugs as the previous version, which amounts to +-120 bugs being crunched, based on votes collected on Altium BugCrunch. 

Graph of Unique users impacted by bug fixes

See What's New. Altium Designer 20, A Computer Aided PCB design Software.

Jeremy Blum is the Director of Engineering at Shaper, a start-up company that built the world's first handheld CNC technology for woodworking. Jeremy talks about his keynote speech at the AltiumLive PCB Design Summit on October 21 - 23 in Frankfurt, Germany. His talk is about product development and lifecycle management from a holistic approach to engineering and design. Learn about his engineering journey from master’s student at Cornell, to GoogleX through his latest engineering adventure launching a consumer-based product at Shaper.

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Show Highlights:

• Shaper is a company in San Fransisco which makes hand-held robotic power tools. Jeremy is the Director of Engineering, overseeing the embedded software team and electrical engineering.
• Before Shaper, he was at Google X for a few years where he worked on system architecture and electrical engineering as well as design projects for Google Glass.
• He first became involved with consumer electronics design at MakerBot Industries.
• His YouTube channel, where you can still see his uploads from as early as 2006, is very popular, and he has also written a textbook: Exploring Arduino, with the second, updated, full-color edition launching very soon.
• Jeremy’s keynote for AltiumLive is titled: Holistic Product Design for Electrical Engineers​. He says his goal for this year’s keynote is to expand on the talk he gave at AltiumLive in 2018, which was about empathetic engineering.
• This year he will focus more on consumer products and the actual requirements of products working all around you, predominantly to make the process more fluid by meeting everyone’s needs.
• The reality of product design is not as abstract as it’s often made out to be. In fact, it’s very different, and Jeremy will discuss requirements that are sometimes out of your control—where compromises must be made.
• Jeremy’s inspiration for the keynote is his unique perspective from a smaller startup producing consumer products, and he’ll dive into the hands-on, full lifecycle of a product.
• It’s important to realize that despite the freely accessible tools today, there are still repercussions when IoT products aren’t reliable or useful; for example, security vulnerabilities in products used directly by consumers.
• Communication with suppliers, vendors, and manufacturers is consistently one of the most difficult parts of the job.
• Meticulous documentation is essential and helpful when it comes to working with vendors in other countries, and it becomes necessary to be able to express disappointment without the buying power of a massive organization behind you.
• The burden of knowledge is real: after PCB West, Jeremy finds himself overthinking work as he learns new ways of doing things.
• Jeremy’s approach to self-education is that it is imperative. He attends conferences, reads industry magazines and websites (taking it all with a grain of salt).
• There is no list of ‘rules of thumb’—they all have caveats. Take the time to ensure which rules apply to your situation, and understand the underlying physics.
• Jeremy feels strongly that the value of attending AltiumLive is meeting experienced people and building relationships with those who are as enthusiastic and excited about what they do.

Links and Resources:

Jeremy Blum on LinkedIn

Jeremy’s YouTube Channel

Jeremy’s new book: Exploring Arduino

JeremyBlum.com

Jeremy on the OnTrack Podcast in Feb 2018

Learn, connect, and get inspired at AltiumLive 2019: Annual PCB Design Summit. 

Jonathan Gottfried is co-founder of Major League Hacking, or MLH, the official student hackathon league. Major League Hacking’s vision is to inspire students worldwide from both traditional and non-traditional backgrounds. They’ve influenced new generations of engineers; from software, hardware, and mechanical disciplines in the events they have thrown worldwide. Learn more about Jonathan and his inspiring work at MLH.

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Show Highlights:

• Jonathan started off as a hobbyist programmer when he was a little kid, building websites and games, and playing around with different technologies. 
• As a student, he would build apps for people as a source of income, and after graduation, landed the amazing role of Developer Evangelist at Twilio Inc.
• While attending CS classes he was exposed to the massive community of passionate tech students who wanted to build things for fun and saw the considerable disconnect between what they were learning in classes and the actual day-to-day work in the industry.
• Major League Hacking is the global community for student developers. They are best known for their hackathons—weekend-long invention competitions in which developers, designers, engineers, and product people come together with their own ideas and build working prototypes in a very short time.
• Major League Hacking also offers technical workshops through its Major League Hacking localhost program, where students can learn a specific, bite-sized skill in an hour or two.
• The coaches at Major League Hacking are student leaders and role models building a diverse community on a local level.
• A new acronym, ‘STEAM’ (rather than ‘STEM’) incorporates the arts. Jon feels strongly that technology is an art and incorporates building products that resonate with people.
• Because the divide between hardware and software is blurring, Major League Hacking makes hardware available at the hacking events—exposure is the first step to becoming passionate about hardware. 
• What is the impact of exposure on non-traditional students? It can be a life-changing experience to be involved in a technical community of supportive, inclusive, passionate and creative people. It can provoke a passion which sitting in a normal class isn’t always able to achieve.  
• The impact on traditional STEM students includes gaining skills for the customer discovery process, for example; it’s a self-driven process.
• The hackathon process is: come up with an idea; get a team excited and on board, and then build the product together—encouraging more soft skills, such as team building, creative thinking, problem-solving, etc.
• In the traditional university model, there isn’t enough focus on the practical aspects of STEM because funding is mainly reserved for research.
• The barriers imposed by lack of hardware access are diminished by the prevalence of cloud hosting.
• Technology is being unleashed in this day and age, and in the coming years it’s going to be even more drastic—creators have a responsibility to ‘use their powers for good.’ 
• Major League Hacking provides resources to students for free, thanks to corporate sponsorship—get involved!   

Links and Resources:

Find out more about how your company can get involved with MLH
If you're a student, learn more about our upcoming hackathons here
Join us in October for Local Hack Day
Host a technical workshop in your club or meetup
Come work for MLH
Altium Student Stories

Follow MLH on social media:
Jon Gottfried - @jonmarkgo
Major League Hacking - @MLHacks

Learn, connect, and get inspired at AltiumLive 2019: Annual PCB Design Summit.

Happy Holden, known as the father of High-Density Interconnect and the author of The HDI Handbook, is this episode’s fascinating guest. We’ll discuss how Happy went from a small-town boy to a first-name basis with legends Bill Hewlett and David Packard, the founders of HP. Happy will be a keynote speaker at our AltiumLive Annual PCB Design Summit in Frankfurt, where he’ll discuss smart factories and how we’re going to get to the point of having digitized data. He’ll also talk about AI and his full-day talk will include HDI and the considerations you need to keep in mind. 

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Show Highlights:

• Happy feels lucky to have been at the right place at the right time throughout his career. He grew up in the mountains of Oregon in a small, highly-involved logging community.
• His math and science teacher in high school had a physics Ph.D.—not a traditional education curriculum. At university, they also had professors who were Nobel prize winners, such as Linus Pauling.
• After graduation, he was invited to interview with the integrated circuit department at Hewlett-Packard, on the recommendation of one of his professors.
• HP was more advanced than IBM when it came to integrated circuits.
  At the time, HP was making high-frequency and RF integrated circuits out of germanium and silicon placed on sapphire wafers, called “Silicon on Sapphire” or SOS.
• Intel was still a start-up at this time.
• As the first chemical engineer at HP in integrated circuit (IC) production; he was on a frontier at HP, the only chemical engineer at a company of fewer than 2,000 people—it was exciting for 21-year-old Happy Holden.
• During his 28 years there, HP climbed to 167,000 employees and from 200 million in sales per year to 54 billion!
• HP’s first 64-bit desktop machine was called a “Desktop Calculator”, because at the time a 64-bit computer was the size of a room.
• By 1972, Happy assisted Bill Hewlett in making an HP35 ‘calculator’ which was battery-powered and fit in his pocket.
• During his keynote, Happy will show pictures of the unique solution they used for the keyboard.
• At the time, they had no idea how to make a reliable gold-plated rigid-flex printed circuit board and the result was an eight-layer logic board, double-sided keyboard, and displays soldered in at an angle.
• Apart from the keynote, Happy will present a full-day class on October 21, which he calls ‘Product realization using HDI technology”; a course on the electrical performance and the advantages and drivers of using High-Density Interconnect and blowing up the myth that you have to pay more for it.
• He will be giving some insights into unlearning several aspects of multi-layers and how miniaturization should indeed save you money by demonstrating four different case studies where complex 18- and 24-layer boards were made into an 8- or 10-layers with High-Density Interconnect and less expensive.
• An interesting aspect of this full-day course is where do we go from here, what’s the next step after HDI?
• Also, don’t miss the keynote on October 23, titled “PCB Trends That Will Impact YOUR Future” and how he started working with AI 25 years ago!

Links and Resources:

HDI Handbook
Articles by Happy Holden

Learn, connect, and get inspired at AltiumLive 2019: Annual PCB Design Summit.

Today in the studio, we welcome Carl Schattke, who works for a leading electric vehicle manufacturer. Carl has almost forty years of experience in PCB Design and will teach us about the things he thinks about when designing very complex boards. He’ll discuss what he’s going to cover as a keynote at AltiumLive in Frankfurt, October 21st through 23rd, and he’ll tell us more about a talk he’s co-presenting with Max Seeley from 3M, in which they’ll discuss going from schematic to PCB layout and passing that baton like a champ. Sign up for AltiumLive now—space is limited!   

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Show Highlights:

• Carl’s earliest memory of an engineering project and the first indication of his future career was at age three when he built a helicopter out of an Erector toy set.
  His father was a mechanical/electrical engineer, and at 8 years of age, he would help with point to point continuity checks. Seeing so many designs helped him develop his own style, good symmetry, and spacing.
• The advantage of having manual experience early on over someone jumping in with electronic tools is the appreciation for using the space that’s available, but today’s boards are so complicated that without that early exposure, Carl feels he would be hard-pressed to do what he does today.
• Carl will bring artwork he did to San Diego so that young designers can get a glimpse of history.
• Carl’s keynote at AltiumLive in Frankfurt will be ‘Making and Breaking the Rules’, where he’ll discuss design rules; where we’ve come from, where we are right now and where we’re going, illustrating what’s important and what we can disregard or change. Do we change the rules?
• In what ways do design rules help or hinder today’s designers? They’re a tremendous help—the clearance rule and the Altium Designer® shadow feature is quite awesome—but in order to remain profitable, we need to understand the gaps in our rules.
• One of the most important ‘tools’ designers have is the ability to communicate with their manufacturer and engineers; asking the right questions to avoid disconnects. Getting the opportunity to connect and reflect and learn, is invaluable.
• Carl will also be doing a two-hour breakout session with Max Seeley from 3M, both in Frankfurt and San Diego; ‘Schematic to PCB Design: Passing the Baton Like a Champion’. This will be very valuable for the audience because they will talk about aspects that we don’t see in videos or read about much.
• The talk will also be beneficial to the EEs laying out their own boards because several circuits will be discussed and they still have to consider all the aspects of their process.
• What is the difference between the thinking process of pure electrical engineers, vs PCB layout pros? Depending on experience, the problems are going to be the same, it all boils down to transition line theory, resistance-capacitance, inductance, and how those things work together on a circuit board.
• Where is the baton mostly dropped? Placement expectations, simple things like what side of the board is which, non-optimal layout, leaving off the timing requirements, leaving differential pairs unlabelled. Many little details can have a huge impact.
• These talks will be very practical in terms of authentic design review—things that are not generally dropped on a schematic and much more.
• Sign up now, space is limited!

Links and Resources:

AltiumLive October, San Diego
AltiumLive, October, Frankfurt
Picture of Rick Hartley on a light table
Carl and Julie’s talk at AltiumLive 2018

Trade In Your Outdated PCB Design Tool & Unlock 45% OFF Altium Designer today!

Today we speak with Bob Martin, a Senior Staff Engineer with Microchip. Bob is also known as ‘the wizard of make’, and today he’ll discuss his AltiumLive Keynote on October 11th in San Diego where he’ll teach on how to go from prototype to production with Arduino Board, transitioning it into a production-ready board that you can manufacture.

Trade In Your Outdated PCB Design Tool & Unlock 45% OFF Altium Designer today!

Watch the video, click here.

Show Highlights:

• Bob graduated from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada in 1987 and spent his entire career in embedded systems, ending up at Microchip Technology with the unusual job title ‘Wizard of Make’ which originated at Atmel.
• The title ‘Wizard of Make’ comes from a discussion to progress his job description at Atmel. Being enamored with makers, and a maker himself - he has attended every maker fair in the Bay Area since its inception. The word ‘wizard’ came from describing some of his talents.
• Bob’s talk at AltiumLive will encompass the many facets of Arduino which enable rapid prototyping and doesn’t require starting designs over during transition to production. He will detail mostly the hardware aspects and how to make the transition to production easier.
• Because of the complexity of systems and the need for rapid prototyping today, the ease of using products like Arduino are becoming more prevalent. You need to be able to talk to your electro-mechanical designer and be more involved in systems-down thinking.
• Quick paths to production through Arduino: there are things that you need and others that you don’t and the keynote will explain what to keep and what to discard to ensure lower production costs.
• Ben will also discuss concepts of testing: where to put test points and why they’re more cost-effective, as well as lowering BOM costs.
  Pete Wilson, from Microchip, will do another talk about dropping pre-certified RF models on designs.
• The ecosystem of products like Adafruit, CircuitMaker, SparkFun, Pololu, MikroElektronika are all very easy to use, relatively inexpensive and almost plug and play, once again enabling rapid prototyping.
• The name ‘Arduino’ is the name of a bar in a town in Italy where Massimo Banzi taught and they used to gather there to discuss the product. Arduino’s software system made things easy, leveling the embedded field.
• Who would this talk be of interest to? Anyone who is interested will be enlightened about what, hardware-wise, makes an Arduino platform, and receive an extension of their knowledge about ACE (Arduino Component Elements).
• What is a professional maker? The pro-maker could be an electrical or mechanical engineer or some other technologist who has recognized a problem or has an idea, using Arduino or a similar system to implement a solution, but in the back of their mind, there’s always the matter of the implications of going into production.
• Eric Bogatin’s talk ‘A Downside of Open Source Designs’ fits in very well with Bob’s regarding the software component and what to look out for when using open-source designs.

Links and Resources:

History of Arduino
Jeremy Blum - Handheld shaper tool video

Learn, connect, and get inspired at AltiumLive 2019: Annual PCB Design Summit.