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OCTOBER 2022 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 39 • Label the schematic so that the next person can understand it • Create an environment where designers are comfortable asking for clarification if they are uncertain how to proceed • Use the DRC and address the warnings and violations it reports Well-designed schematics will save time, money, and frustration both for your current project and future endeavors. If your sche- matic is nice to look at and easy to understand, your team can utilize blocks for other similar projects down the road. Teams that commit to good schematic practices win the long game. Commit to Best Practices and Good Process We all want to create great final prod- ucts. Designers want to make great boards. Engineers want to make great schematics. To get there, we also need to think about making the work of the next person easier. When you commit to best practices, clear communication, and clean schematics, everyone benefits. DESIGN007 Matt Stevenson is the VP of sales and marketing at Sun- stone Circuits. To read past columns or contact Stevenson, click here. Research led by Monash and RMIT Universi- ties in Melbourne has found a way to create an advanced photonic integrated circuit that builds bridges between data superhighways, revolu- tionising the connectivity of current optical chips and replacing bulky 3D-optics with a wafer-thin slice of silicon. This development, published in the prestigious journal Nature Photonics, has the ability to warp- speed the global advancement of artificial intel- ligence and offers significant real-world applica- tions such as: • Safer driverless cars capable of instantly interpreting their surroundings • Enabling AI to more rapidly diagnose medical conditions • Making natural language processing even faster for apps such as Google Homes, Alexa and Siri. • Smaller switches for reconfiguring optical networks that carry our internet to get data where it's needed faster Whether it's turning on a TV or keeping a satellite on course, photonics (the science of light) is transforming the way we live. The pho- tonic chips can transform the processing capa- bility of bulky bench sized utilities onto fingernail sized chips. The project's lead investigator says this break- through complements the previous discovery of Monash University's Dr. Bill Corcoran who, in partnership with RMIT in 2020, developed a new optical microcomb chip that can squeeze three times the traffic of the entire NBN through a sin- gle optical fibre, regarded as the world's fastest internet speed from a single fingernail-sized chip. The optical microcomb chip built multiple lanes of the superhighway, now the self-calibrating chip has created the on and off ramps and bridges that connect them all and allow greater move- ment of data. (Source: Monash University) A World First: Self-calibrated Photonic IC: New Interchange for Optical Data Superhighways