24 The PCB Design Magazine • December 2016
neering effort can be invested in a sale that may
eventuate in multiple seats globally. The com-
plexity and expense, associated with EDA prod-
ucts and services, generally require a lengthy
customer education,
evaluation and approval
process and greatly depend on the customers'
budgetary constraints and budget cycles. These
salespeople use
target account selling techniques
to break into the closed circle of influence with-
in a company to close the sale. However, at the
SME level, this amount of effect can no longer
be justified. So the lower-level sales are more a
numbers game, where profit margins are much
tighter. Rather than make sales visits to a pro
-
spective company,
vendors now easily demon-
strate online and market via public webinars.
While most design is now performed by the
SME companies who now dominate the EDA
market, EDA tools must evolve to satisfy the
challenging needs of today's engineers and PCB
designers. The latest EDA offerings provide high
-
ly productive tools for the ever-increasing num-
ber of global users, at an affordable price point.
Really, it has never been better!
PCBDESIGN
References
1. Barry Olney's Beyond Design columns:
Rise of the Independent Engineer, Why Auto-
routers Don't Work, and Learning the Curve
2. Peggy Aycinena: PCB Tools, Part 1
3. Cadence Design Systems 10-K Filings
4. Santiago Solari: How Cadence generates a
steady revenue stream
5. Kirti Sikri Desai: EDA Innovation through
Merger Acquisitions
6. Ed Sperling: Buying And Selling EDA
Companies
Barry Olney is Managing Director
of In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd (iCD),
Australia. The company is a PCB
design service bureau that spe-
cializes in board-level simulation.
iCD developed the iCD Stackup
Planner and iCD PDN Planner soft-
ware. Visit www.icd.com.au.
MARKETING IN THE MATURING EDA INDUSTRY
Scientists at The University of
Manchester and Karlsruhe Insti-
tute of Technology have demon-
strated a method to chemically
modify small regions of gra-
phene with high precision, lead-
ing to extreme miniaturisation of
chemical and biological sensors.
Writing in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces,
researchers led by Dr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan have
shown that it is possible to combine graphene
with chemical and biological molecules and form
patterns, which are 100s of nanometres wide.
Graphene is the world's first two-dimensional
material. It is strong, transparent, flexible and the
world's most conductive material. Every atom in
graphene is exposed to its environment, allowing
it to sense changes in its surroundings.
Using technology that resembles writing with
a quill or fountain pen, the scientists were able
to deliver chemical droplets to the surface of gra-
phene in very small volumes.
In order to achieve such fine
chemical patterns, the re-
searchers used droplets of
chemicals less than 100 attoli-
tres (10-16 L) in volume; that's
1/10,000,000,000,000,000th
of a litre.
Two types of 'pens' were used, one which is
dipped into the reactive 'ink' like a quill to cover
the nib, and the other where the ink is filled into a
reservoir and flows through a channel in the nib,
just like in a fountain pen. An array of such micro-
pens are moved over the graphene surface to de-
liver the chemical droplets which react with the
graphene.
These techniques are key to enabling graphene
sensors which can be used in real-world applica-
tions; graphene sensors fabricated this way have
the potential to be used in blood tests, minimising
the amount of blood a patient is required to give.
Graphene Calligraphy
