Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1153097
88 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2019 fore, such as 20–30 years ago when we suc- cessfully did it at CCT. Because all those large companies you mentioned usually have their own activities going on with autorouting tech- nology. It's not that easy, but we look forward to partnering with anyone who would be in- terested. Shaughnessy: You were one of the earliest peo- ple at CCT, correct? Liao: Yes. Shaughnessy: And did CCT develop the first true commercialized gridless router? Liao: I'm not sure. Some people will argue Ra- cal-Redac was the first. Shaughnessy: Right, Alan Finch was at Ra- cal-Redac when he designed the first gridless router. I interviewed him once, and he said he was showing it at DAC, and Cooper and Chyan were standing there watching him. Liao: Oh, really? (laughs) Shaughnessy: Then, they came out with Specc- tra a few years later. Liao: I read Alan Finch's paper, and I think he deserves a lot of respect. He's the pioneer of gridless routing. The business strategy in CCT was right. They made the router a standalone tool, and almost everybody in the industry used that technology. Shaughnessy: It's a shame that designers have these great routers, and for the most part, they don't want to use them. Liao: Right. We also try to incorporate the same approach as CCT so that they could plug it into any existing design environment, but it's be- coming harder to do. Shaughnessy: Would you like to add anything else? Liao: The floorplanner is simple. We want to provide a tool to let the engineer be able to do floorplanning. I hope this idea will prosper in the industry and more and more people will use floorplanners and routers in the future. Shaughnessy: Thanks for speaking with us, Zen. Liao: Thank you. DESIGN007 as Efficient Interfaces for Plasmonic Devices"). As Sergio Lechago, researcher at the NTC and co-au- thor of the study, explains, plasmonic devices have en- abled the development of important applications in fields such as spectroscopy, near-field and sensing optic mi- croscopy thanks to their unique capability of manipulat- ing light on a nano level. Within the communications integrated in the chip, plas- monics enable the development of ultra-compact and af- fordable devices (modulators, detectors or sources) that can function at very high operation speeds with low en- ergy consumption. This new breakthrough could also be applied to fields such as biochemical or agri-food industries. (Source: Asociación RUVID) Researchers of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), from the Nanophotonic Technology Centre (NTC), have designed new silicon nanoantennas with direct ap- plications in communication and data processing for the next generation of reconfigurable photonic chips. The work of the UPV researchers has been published in ACS Photonics ("All-Silicon On-Chip Optical Nanoantennas New Nanoantennas to Improve Ultra-Fast Wireless Connections