Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1411055
40 PCB007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2021 is something that over the long-term we hope to make happen. In the short term, it's pret- ty difficult to eliminate it entirely, but I think there are certain things that could be done a lot better without file translation. It doesn't re- quire them to change out all their systems and infrastructure and so forth. Johnson: en there's the other dynamic, where the fab gets the files, which they analyze and perhaps they make some tweaks and ad- justments. ey fix some acid traps and make it manufacturable, and what they actually build is not exactly what was sent by the customer. ere's oen an open loop in that backend an- notation. Does the Nexar environment help re- solve that? Pawela: Yes. Actually, I'm really glad that you brought that up because I think that's another creative issue for us. Let's say you build some prototypes, and then a year later, you say, "I'm going to go to some level of production." en you oen find that you're possibly giving a different manufacturer a version of the de- sign to build that's not actually what was built before. at's exactly the problem that you've highlighted. We think having that metadata model under- neath it, that represents the PCB in the schema as you said, will eliminate that as much as pos- sible. We can keep that synchronized so that the design golden record always stays current with all the changes that take place, whether it was from changes that took place because my procurement people made a swap in a compo- nent that was unobtainable at the time. Johnson: When I go to production, I don't want to go with the original data; I want the produc- tion house to be able to see what the proto- type house did, because I want to duplicate my working approved prototype exactly. Pawela: Yes. at's exactly right. is is one of the things that Nexar would enable and it's a problem that we're targeting to solve. Johnson: How do you handle cybersecurity? Our industry includes ITAR, defense-related restrictions, and security issues. Will Nexar be secure enough to allow companies to get their qualifications? Pawela: at's something we are actively work- ing on with our cloud hosting partner, Ama- zon Web Services. A couple of things I would like to say about that. One, if anybody tells you that they're absolutely secure, impenetrable, and there's no risk with respect to cybersecu- rity, they're either ignorant or lying. It's just not possible. ere are new threats all the time, and the unspoken thing is that oen the biggest security issues are elated to people—the guy who sticks a USB stick into the computer and takes it home or leaves it on the bus, or what- ever it might be. We've found, even internally, as we go through cybersecurity audits, it usual- ly turns out that our own people and their be- haviors are one of, if not the biggest, risk area. However, there are many things that we can do. Amazon works with us to make sure that Ted Pawela