Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1014812
14 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2018 design of printed circuit boards, which in my mind is really not design—it's layout, because you're starting with the design. The circuit has been designed, the product has been archi- tected, and now that layout designer has to figure out how to get all that hooked together within the confines of the space that has been allotted. Doesn't make the challenge any dif- ferent, but it's a different kind of design. It's more of a problem-solving design as opposed to a creative design, not that there isn't any creativity in trying to solve the problem. Those two different kinds of design present different perspectives. What I think you see is that if you could get a better interface between those two designers—the architect and the product designer who is trying to figure out how to build what he wants to build and then the layout designer who is trying to actually make sure that everything can and will go together—I think that's the conversation that we still lack. We've done a lot of work, trying to get more feedback from manufacturing back to the product designer, and that has generated a lot of rules for the layout designer. The problem is that product designers just don't really listen well to the layout designer. Getting those two people to work together is very difficult; it's like getting the sales guy and the manufactur- ing guy to agree on a delivery date! Barry Matties: From an overall design rule practice, what do you think is the most impor- tant feedback from a fabrica- tor or assembly facility? Bauer: The interface between the printed circuit board fab- ricator and the printed circuit board designer is one place where the interface is actually fairly strong. Between them, they've been able to figure out what can and cannot be done. The layout designer and the fabricator tend to be close enough together that they actually do a fairly decent job of that. It's not perfect, but they do a decent job. When you make changes after the product has already been designed and put into pro- duction, it's another story. I think that when you talk about the fabricator or the assembly guy feeding back to the product designer, that's a much slower loop, for sure. The only time anybody gets any attention is when a product fails because the product designer screwed up, big time. Otherwise, it's the assembly house that ends up paying the piper by having to put in more effort to get the product out the door. Unfortunately, that tends to keep prices from coming down as fast as they might be able to if there was better communication on that side of the loop. Holden: Chuck, is there a future for glass as an interposer instead of silicon? I spent the last three years working for Gentex. They pro- cess about 50 million square feet of glass a year. Extremely thin glass that's laser-cut and shaped and everything else. Bauer: I think that glass is going to face the same issue that fan-out wafer-level packaging faces. Back in the years when I was at Tektro- nix, Corning Glass asked, "What can we do Figure 2: Packages have come along way over the past 60 years.