Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1174596
10 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2019 For this issue, we wanted to take a snapshot of the PCB design segment as it exists today: the good, the bad, and everything in between. After interviewing designers at trade shows and conferences this year, I think it's safe to say that it's a pretty good time to be a PCB de- signer or design engineer. It's also the most in- teresting, hectic time for this segment that I can remember. I wouldn't use the word "vola- tile," but that's not too far off the mark. There is a lot going on right now in electronics. All of these new technologies are swirling around, and designers are rightly wondering how they might have to change their design processes to adapt. "Faster" and "smaller" are still the watch- words for even the simplest PCBs. In one of our features, Lee Ritchey explains how he has watched speeds increase 40,000X in just the last 24 years. On top of that, designers have been told that they should have a decent work- ing knowledge of 5G and IoT as well as In- dustry 4.0 and smart factories, just to be sure; that's a lot to take in. Of course, designers like this kind of thing. They enjoy putting togeth- er pieces of a complex puzzle, and these are just a few more pieces of the puzzle. Tell them what the board needs to do, and they'll design it for you. These are good times for the design world, but it's all cyclical. The current landscape re- minds me of the attitude in the design com- munity when I first started covering this beat. The dot-com boom was taking off, and we saw startups coming online and EDA companies merging almost monthly. I remember meeting dot-com company owners who couldn't ex- plain how they planned to make any revenue. If you had a dot-com, money was just going to fall from the sky. The Shaughnessy Report by Andy Shaughnessy, I-CONNECT007 The Landscape of the Design Community