Back in the Saddle
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” – Al Pacino
So let me start where Mike Buetow left off in our last issue: Thanks. And let’s hear a round of applause for Mike. He’s spent 26 years writing this column, longer than both of my marriages combined.
But I see why he’s stuck around for so long. PCEA’s magazines, newsletters and trade shows provide vital information for technologists in the PCB design, fabrication and assembly segments. People rely on our products to do their jobs better and more productively. Readers tell us how important our content is.
Plus, PCEA is a great place to work. I’m fortunate to be part of a group of wonderful people, from the staff to the board members, some of whom I’ve known since the ‘90s. They’re a lot of fun, especially at trade shows. But I can’t tell too many stories about the old trade show days because of the statute of limitations.
I started out at Printed Circuit Design in 1999 as an assistant editor, still a wee lad in my 30s. (According to our 1998 PCB Designer Salary Survey, the average PCB designer was around my age.) On my first day, I inherited a Rolodex and a desk full of hanging folders. I opened snail mail every day, because that’s how most companies sent out product announcements and press releases.
At the time, HDI had just begun to proliferate, thanks to cellphones and the new GPS devices. Flexible circuits, especially rigid-flex, were considered too expensive for most applications.
On the design side, every design was output in Gerber. EDA tools featured autorouters, but designers didn’t like to use them. Signal integrity was a growing concern, but most PCB designers didn’t have to worry about SI yet, and power integrity was rarely mentioned at all. Signal integrity analysis tools were expensive add-ons, not part of your typical mainstream EDA platform.
Speaking of which, there were nearly a dozen mainstream EDA companies back then, including VeriBest, DDE, PADS, Intercept Technology, Protel and Accel, in addition to the bigger players Mentor Graphics, Cadence and Zuken. Cadence acquired OrCAD that year.
At the time, the industry was riding high. The US was still the electronics manufacturing powerhouse of the world. The dotcom boom was in full swing, and North American fabricators still numbered in the thousands. But change was coming.
Many of the EDA startups I encountered were dotcoms, and they were completely virtual. They often called themselves something like “a portal for the PCB design and design engineering community.” Perhaps even an e-portal! They were showered with Silicon Valley e-cash, but almost all of them were e-gone within a few years, as were many American fabricators.
A lot has changed since 1999. We’ve gone through a laundry list of disruptions: three downturns, implementation of the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive, Covid, the post-pandemic supply chain debacle, the continued consolidation of EDA companies and PCB manufacturers, and the steady flow of PCB manufacturing from North America to Asia. We’re now down to about 180 North American fabricators, but these companies are stronger than ever.
Along the way, we’ve witnessed a number of manufacturing innovations, such as UHDI, SAP and mSAP, and the meteoric rise in the use of flexible and rigid-flex circuits. Rigid-flex has gone from niche to mainstream in a little over a decade.
On the EDA side, we have the “Big Four” PCB design software companies and a slew of companies making free and inexpensive CAD tools. Almost every PCB design tool contains some type of signal and power integrity analysis capability, as well as thermal management. Autorouters now feature a variety of capabilities that were unheard of years ago, but designers still don’t like to use them. And despite the availability of IPC-2581 and ODB++ intelligent data transfer standards, Gerber is still used to output over 90% of PCB designs.
Some things never change.
In the last few years, AI has become part of our lives, at work and play. AI-assisted software is now used throughout our industry. On the shop floor, process engineering managers see AI as a means for simplifying their daily reports. But some designers believe AI is going to replace them, not assist them.
Do you see AI as a disruption or an innovation?
Well, I’ve been given the keys to the car, and I promise I won’t wreck it. I’m going to keep covering this crazy industry that’s been so good to so many of us. I’m glad to be back working with Mike, Frances Stewart and Brooke Downey, and my new coworkers Ryann Howard, Will Bruwer and Leah Spinks. What a great team.
See you next month!
Andy Shaughnessy is content architect of PCD&F/Circuits Assembly; andy@pcea.net.