Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1219242
12 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2020 50–70 gigahertz right now, with very advanced embedding, complicated breakouts from their BGA, and high-density routing. The signal in- tegrity has to be really good. One specifica- tion—IEEE P370—defines what good signal in- tegrity is at 50 gigahertz. A customer will say, "We have something that we'd like you to help on." Once we're at the technical credibility part of the meet- ing, they will say, "We need it done by next month," and we will say, "We don't do things like this by next month. It takes a long time." One of the issues with profitability is that if you want to save money, you need the project manager or an executive in that group to do their job. Your job is to manage the team in a way that you reduce risk. If you're going to want to do 112 gigs in 2020, you should have been working on the test fix- tures—the compliance, firmware, and all of that—three years ago. You can't just pull a stack-up that's suitable; you don't know what the routing is. You have to throw a team to- gether ahead of time. Then, you have to do some test vehicles because each stack-up for that level is very demanding. I'm talking about Feature Interview by Andy Shaughnessy I-CONNECT007 If your company is having trouble designing PCBs for profitability, where does the blame fall? Is it management's fault for having ineffi- cient processes, or is it the fault of the design- ers and design engineers for not keeping up to date with their training? During DesignCon, I asked Al Neves of Wild River Technology to weigh in on this question. As he explains, you and your manager might both be to blame for inefficiencies in the design process. Andy Shaughnessy: Al, we were just talking about designing for profitability. You men- tioned that you had a few pithy thoughts on the subject. Al Neves: Yes, and I see a trend. The work that we focus on is high-risk, extremely demand- ing signal integrity projects. About half of our business is service, and the other half is standard products. On the service side, some- body will come out with silicon and want a test platform. Many of the test platforms are Designing for Profitability: It's up to You (and Your Management) Al Neves