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30 The PCB Design Magazine • April 2017 program that was very verti- cally integrated and make it work on a short time scale. Today, of course, not so much. It's quite difficult to put to- gether the integrated solutions necessary. Global companies like TTM that have many of the required capabilities and a culture of internal cooperation are in a good position to help fill those gaps. Matties: Yes. I would think with the global foot- print and the supply chain it's very difficult. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should be sharing with the industry? Davidson: Oh, let's see. Well, I guess the only comment I have is that many companies don't understand what it takes to qualify new mate- rials and processes. That's very true outside of the optics space, for example with high-speed materials. This has been an issue now with the industry for the last decade or so. So many new materials are being introduced and it's difficult to characterize them fully for all the variations of PCB configurations including straight up lam, multi-lamination, different types of via constructs, different copper weights and cop- per profiles, different glass styles and for differ- ent applications. It is really quite a challenge. Companies sometimes forget the work involved and the risk they take when introducing new materials to their products. TTM also has a very extensive materials program to look at all these aspects of performance and provide experience and data to customers. Having said that, the proliferation of mate- rials gives us many now to choose from when before there may really have been only one or two in key performance categories. Matties: We've heard about the material pro- cess, the approval process and how lengthy it can be—a multi-year process in some cases. Do you see ways of streamlining this process that the industry should be considering? Davidson: Yes, and we do participate in leveraged activities where we can to help with this work. TTM, for example, is a mem- ber of HDPUG (the High-Den- sity Packaging Users Group) and we are a big supporter of HDPUG. Through HDPUG, we can evaluate many new materials. If you go through the literature, HDPUG pe- riodically publishes results. They have done a lot of really good work in terms of lead-free compatibility and CAF performance over the years with the newer high-speed materials. We take advantage by working with these consortia and leveraged activities whenever possible, so that helps. Some companies understand how difficult this is and have very aggressive and rigorous materials qualification programs. That's certainly true of the automotive cus- tomers. Many have internally qualified—with their suppliers' help—their own materials list. But there are many customers that really don't have that expertise internally. But they can take advantage of our extensive materials test data- base and process expertise. Obviously, today, there are designers that have never been in a printed circuit board fabrication facility. They just go through a catalog, pick a material that seems right and use it. Many times, that's not the right way to go. Shaughnessy: That's most of my readers, Craig. I think half of my designer readers have never been in a board shop, and then for the few that have it's been 25 years. Davidson: Yeah. I totally get it. We have out- reach programs within TTM, run by our applica- tions engineering team that's out in the field all the time. They are doing lunch and learns and PCB-101 fabrication seminars for companies and otherwise lending fabrication expertise. Matties: Well, Craig, we certainly appreciate your time today and we know you're a busy man and we thank you for your insight for sure. Davidson: Sure, no problem. I enjoyed it. Thank you. PCBDESIGN Figure 4: PhoxDem09.04MPX – 18L+2 opt embedded WG layers. TTM SHINES A LIGHT ON OPTICAL INTERCONNECT