PCB007 Magazine

PCB007-Nov2021

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94 PCB007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2021 e whole circuit board industry presents a new turning point, and the carrier board has achieved double-digit growth. In computer- related categories, especially high-end com- puter categories, PCB production technol- ogy has changed to high complexity packaging technology. HDI board technology is not lim- ited to mobile phones, but is more widely used in automotive, server, memory storage, lap- top, tablet, and other product fields. Since 2020, the carrier board market has grown rapidly as a whole. e manufactur- ing of carrier boards is mainly concentrated in Asia. According to the carrier board invest- ment plans announced by domestic and for- eign enterprises, the investment amount has exceeded US $10 billion. ere is a great demand for carrier boards in the future. e technology and market of carrier boards deserve everyone's attention. PCB007 Dr. Wood Chiang, BYU professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team have just built the world's most power-efficient high-speed ana- log-to-digital converter (ADC) microchip. An ADC is a tiny piece of technology present in almost every electronic piece of equipment that converts analog signals (like a radio wave) to a digital signal. The ADC created by Chiang, Ph.D. student Eric Swindlehurst and their colleagues consumes only 21 milli-Watts of power at 10GHz for ultra-wide- band wireless communications; current ADCs con- sume hundreds of milli-Watts or even Watts of power at compara- ble speeds. The BYU-made ADC has the highest power efficiency currently available in the world— a record it holds by a substantial margin. "Many research groups world- wide focus on ADCs; it's like a BYU Researchers Create World's Most Power-Efficient High-Speed ADC Microchip competition of who can build the world's fastest and most fuel-efficient car," Chiang said. "It is very diffi- cult to beat everyone else around the world, but we managed to do just that." The central challenge facing researchers like Chi- ang is that increasingly higher bandwidths within communications system devices means circuits that consume more power. Chiang, Swindlehurst and their team set out to solve the problem by focus- ing on a key part of the ADC circuit called the DAC. (Confusing, right? Yes, there is a central piece on an ADC called a DAC and it stands for the opposite: digital-to-ana- log converter.) (Source: BYU) Photo: The analog-to-digital con- verter or ADC microchip created by Professor Wood Chiang, Ph.D. student Eric Swindlehust and their team of researchers. (Photo by Jaren Wilkey/BYU Photo)

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