Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1174596
34 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2019 Ritchey: I speak from experience. We had that problem at 3Com with stuff we shipped to Eu- rope. Shaughnessy: Did you have to pay a fine? Ritchey: We probably paid $80,000–90,000 in fines. Until then, 3Com was not paying any at- tention. They had an EMI compliance group who was faking it. Shaughnessy: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you see for the de- signer today? Ritchey: Compared to what we did when we had lots of parallel buses, the de- sign job has become easi- er by quite a bit. Routing a differential pair is putting two wires down that are the same length. The one that is still high up there is if you have DDR4 be- cause it's getting so fast; the hardest thing there is to route and power delivery, of course. Shaughnessy: One good thing is we see a lot of in- structors out there teaching this. A lot of these classes are packed. There's a definite desire for the knowledge. Ritchey: I've been trying to back off teaching some, but my 2020 is booked already. Shaughnessy: Wow. It's hard to even semi- retire. Ritchey: My kids ask me that all the time, and I say, "I'll retire when the phone quits ringing." Why would I retire? I'm working on a satellite right now. People who do something like I do don't want to retire; they want to have time off to play. I retired once for about a year in 1992 when I worked with the design company, and the first two or three months were wonderful. I did all of the stuff I couldn't do when I had a job. Then, I looked around and said, "Every- body I like to do things with is at work," so I went back to work. If you like what you're do- ing, then I don't see why you should retire. Johnson: As things are changing, you're talking about having plenty of work to do, and for the very skilled PCB designers who have a good sense of analog and high-speed and putting all of this together, there seems to be no shortage of work. At the same time, there's more design going on at more OEMs as things become more electronic all the time. Re- garding the skills gap, do you think we'll see more designers transitioning to PCB design bureaus in the long run? Ritchey: Historically, board designers have not had e n g i n e e r i n g d e g re e s. They were called art- ists because once upon a time when we did tap- ing, we made something called artwork. But the engineering content of a board is so high now that board designers need an engineering degree, and most of the board designers I work with do have engineering degrees now. Also, more universities have programs for board designers. In fact, the engineering group I'm working with has one, and they're using most of my material. The engineering content is so high that designers, to be successful, must have a technical back- ground. And more universities are offering that. For your second question, is it going to be more in-house or service bureau? I don't think that's going to change from where it is right now. There are an awful lot of startups around here that, in the beginning, aren't in a position to build a CAD group. And some of them that