Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1024460
38 PCB007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2018 is the key. The ability to take advantage of the process capabilities with design and applica- tion expertise to help customers convert tradi- tional designs or create brand new ones is crit- ical to market acceptance as well. This is what the Benchmark relationship is all about. Beaulieu: One of the things I always look for in a company is what makes them outstanding. What is it about HSIO that makes them out- standing? Rathburn: Our technology has been very well- received by an impressive list of custom- ers across many market segments. The en- gineering communities can solve challenges and cr eate new ways of integrating electron- ics components into a package, or higher-lev- el assembly. Traditional high-performance ma- terials are typically expensive and actually re- duce the density of interconnect in many cas- es when pushing to higher frequencies. Our appr oach allows for higher-tuned perfor- mance while increasing the density and re- ducing the effective product size. The ability to embed components that ar e normally sur- face mounted is a large focus for the future. Benchmark is enabling the entir e capability chain to help customers with engineering ex - pertise focused to take best advantage of the technology from concept, through production, as far as the customer would like to go, all the way to system and box build. Many custom - ers can envision multiple generations of inte- gration with enhancements rather than brand ne w design, which is very significant from a time-to-market and development standpoint. We believe that once the technology is adopt - ed, there is no going back to previous gener- ations with conventional materials and meth- ods. I think what makes HSIO stand out is we ha ve very good relationships with the test and development groups within the leading semi - conductor companies. Our products are used to test many of the future chips 1–3 years be- fore the devices that use those chips enter the mark et. We see the system requirements driv- en by the next-generation chip technology needs long befor e any printed circuit supplier or EMS company would. Providing the tech- nology and high performance needed for sil- icon validation and system level test and en- abling those capabilities in volume production end-pr oduct use is a major goal of the Bench- mark-HSIO relationship. Beaulieu: Where do you rate HSIO's products and technology compared to the competition? Rathburn: Our main competition is the conven- tional material sets and design rules. Most en- gineering teams would rather extend what is already being produced to meet the next gen- eration requirements. Another competitive as- pect is that LCP as a material has been an elu- sive treasure that has a bad reputation for be- ing difficult to process, hard to control, and unreliable in the field. Volume use within the cellphone market in recent years has helped overcome reluctance and our technology dem- onstrations are possibly the most impressive LCP products built. The technology convergence I mentioned is creating multiple roadblocks across mul- tiple industries; that is a huge challenge, but also a significant opportunity. As signal speeds and frequencies jump from today to multi- ples of toda y in the next couple of years, it is not only important to function at the desired base frequency, but the accuracy of the circuits in the band around that frequency is equally, if not more, important. Our philosophy is "ev - ery micron matters" and that is truly the case Figure 3: Cross-section of coaxial signal lines embedded in LCP circuit stack.