Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1276973
AUGUST 2020 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 57 Kolar: We've seen assemblers do that more often than fabricators. For example, I've seen some assemblers say, "If you don't provide ODB++ data, and if we just have to work with pick-and-place data, it's going to take this much longer for setup. We're going to have to do this programming. We're going to do this tooling." I see assemblers doing that more now where they really take into account the manual effort. I don't see fab shops doing that as explicitly. We have some customers who insist on designs being WYSIWYG: whatever they produce, the fab vendor must build and not touch. We try to push back on our customers with that. There are things we say, "Let the fab house do this. Let them specify the panel. Here's within 5 to 10% tolerance for trace and space. Feel free to tweak it." There are certain things we feel it is better to have the fab shop do because it's optimized to their process. It would be a good question to ask the fab shops: Which of these things are reasonable to expect them to do, and that they prefer to do? And which ones are we just assuming they prefer to do? Because that's where we really like to push back on customers who want us to predefine panel drawings and panel arrays or predefine that we've pre-expanded. We avoid doing pre-expansion and try to do one-to-one design. The shops can optimize that. DESIGN007 Part 2 of this interview will appear in the September 2020 issue of Design007 Magazine. "Alchitry was started with the goal of creating an FPGA board that was accessible to anyone with the motivation to learn digital design. As we evolved to include tutori- als and the creation of software such as Alchitry Labs and Lucid, it became increasingly difficult to balance the manufacturing and production of existing products with the creation of new products, more tutorials, and better tools," said Justin Rajewski, Alchitry founder. (Source: PR Newswire) SparkFun Electronics and Alchitry are pleased to announce they have entered into a strategic partnership, combining SparkFun's logistics and hardware expertise with Alchitry's FPGA knowledge and experience. SparkFun will manufacture and distribute Alchitry's line of FPGA boards, allowing Alchitry to focus on designing the next generation of FPGA hardware and software. The Alchitry Au and Cu boards will now come equipped with a SparkFun Qwiic connector, allowing users to easily inter- face with over 100 development boards, sen- sors and relays over an I2C connection. The addition of Qwiic to Alchitry's FPGA boards opens up the possibilities of designing with FPGA to near-limitless potentials. "While FPGAs have been a niche compo- nent in the electronics industry for decades, the advent of FPGA-based solutions for machine learning and the ability of FPGAs to model CPU core designs is leading an expan- sion of FPGA use within the prototyping and research markets. With this partnership, we will be able to combine SparkFun's market presence and manufacturing capabilities with Alchitry's FPGA knowledge and experi- ence," said Glenn Samala, SparkFun CEO. SparkFun, Alchitry Bring FPGA Hardware and Software to Electronics Enthusiasts