Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1309864
NOVEMBER 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 41 We're back with the OEMs again with much more of a plan on integration because they now understand that the chip manufacturers are already going to go there. What I'm looking for is the next generation that they were talk- ing to us about, where they don't know how they're going to route them, and they want to use VeCS as the primary source of routing. When they build reference designs from a chip structure, either a system on a chip or MCM, and when they build it, and it's designed for VeCS, that's when the paradigm shift will hap- pen. That's where you'll see integration all the way through the designers and OEMs. Design- ing for VeCS doesn't limit them to using it ei- ther as the alternative routing methods can be used if needed. That's a bonus for confidence in developing this technology. HDI didn't have that option. WUS is getting a lot of contacts from design houses wanting to start to under- stand how to use this system so that they're ready for the wave. Johnson: We've been doing a deep dive into the IEEE's Heterogeneous Integration Road- map (HIR). The work you're doing here seems to dovetail with that roadmap very nicely. Dickson: If you were to go to most of the OEM roadmaps of the key network, we've made it on most of their roadmaps. We're on there from the standpoint of where they want to put us in their SI performance and what their next generation will look like. The chip manufac- turers were where we thought it would be the most difficult to get on there. But if you talk to them, you'll see that there are plans built into their roadmaps for this technology now too. The resources that were required to get to that next level and the simulation tools that needed to be done and walk through are coming. Most of that work is pretty much done. We're now at a point where how do we get it on a plan, and how do we move to the next level? Matties: When we look at a board fabricator, how active or integrated are they in the role of selling this technology? By bringing more and more of their customers in line with this, they're going to add capacity back into their manufacturing process or facility. They're also going to increase profit and lower their total overall cost as well. They have a vested inter- est in promoting this. Dickson: I'm a board manufacturer. I've been doing it forever. I took the short vacation to go to Cisco and be on the OEM side for a small amount of time, but my whole career has been manufacturing. Being at Cisco opened my eyes a lot to how limited the ability of board man- ufacturers is to stretch to disruptive technolo- gies. You can see what's out there in the indus- try. There are amazingly bright people doing incredible innovations that are evolutionary additions to what we do. Almost no one is try- ing to do things that are extremely disruptive. It's about something as simple as standard- izing manufacturing of cores so a PCB suppli- er doesn't have to store numerous types of per- ishable core/prepreg materials. It baffles me that there's no industry development to elimi- nate this, even after 50 years of doing the same way. It probably will come only when a single supplier develops it as a disruptive technolo- gy, but even then, the supply chain will resist it, as it's not mature. Those types of signifi- cant changes die because the people like me that are in this industry forever are very fixed