Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1401769
AUGUST 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 29 tantly to ODB and while the benefits to both sides—the fabricator and the OEM—are now indisputable, ODB is "different," and the cur- rent process works, so why change? e Val- or people should be in the EDA hall of fame with the whole idea of a neutral intelligent de- sign format that we're now leveraging off and has resulted in the IPC-2581. It's a no-brainer. As a segue here, we can have the same conver- sation on the contract manufacturing side. Just think about getting Gerbers and a spreadsheet for the parts list and having to put that togeth- er to drive the assembly process. Max Clark: Oh, it's actually worse, because there you have to plug it into equations and all the other challenges that go with it. Joe Clark: Yes, and then there are ECOs. You've got to put these designs onto an assembly line which is very manual, and the design keeps changing. e CMs are very risk averse; they have a process that works, they're driven by maximizing capacity utilization, and it is gen- erational in a way. It's going to take time, and what will rule the roost here is the market. It's going to take the big OEMs telling their fabri- cators and their contract manufacturers this is what we want to work with. It improves that handshake between the upstream processes, where the IP is created, and the downstream processes where we manufacture these things. Max Clark: Right. You're trying to perfect the process to release these products as effectively and as efficiently, as well as error-free, as possi- ble. Everything else is pointless. If I was a fab- ricator, and I'm going to oversimplify this, but if I could get a design—and I don't care what format it came in—and just get everything to handle my best process and then send it out to the factory floor, I'd be styling. We build all these complicated CAM applications with the intention to improve yield. at should be the tool. at should be the focus of the CAM ap- plications. Instead, the fabricators and assem- bly people end up spending their time finding where their challenges are going to be. Almeida: e average ages, the average experi- ence, and the average number of years moves up. As you get to a certain point in life you don't want to make changes unnecessarily. Joe Clark: When I go into a company to pres- ent one of our products, if I see a group of people who are my age, I get a little worried (laughs). If I see a younger group— like some of the young people in the IPC-2581 c o n s o r t i u m — t h e y 'r e usually embracing new ideas, like this use of in- telligent design formats in a way that is great to hear and see. It will happen, it will. We'd like to accelerate it for various reasons. Gerber will probably always be with us to some degree, but there is a transition happening. It'll just take time. Max Clark: ere's also another challenge that I don't know how anyone can solve. We're all used to working with the large OEMs. If you take all those people and you add their num- ber of EDA seats together, it's minuscule com- pared to the smaller guys. Recently, I saw that there are approximately five million copies of a smaller but popular EDA solution out there. Joe Clark: All legal? (laughs). Max Clark: Whether it's legal, as long as there's that volume out there, they're the customer base that everybody on this call doesn't usually have traction at. Matties: In one of our recent interviews, some- body posited a question to Andy: Who actual- Joe Clark