Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1518649
APRIL 2024 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 13 Last year, none of the contestants finished the entire design. It must be hard to design a competition that's challenging without being too tough. Crawford: Yes. It's worth noting, too, that we originally thought most of the competi- tors would be "seasoned" industry folks with decades of experience. But experience taught us it's not the case. e actual median number of years of hands-on design experience for our competitors is three-and-a-half to four years, with a few outliers who have been in the indus- try for 20. So, in the prelim design, it's not like they're dealing with a 128-pin FPGA with a breakout route to a memory chip. It's only 111 pins. I'm kidding! Kris, what advice did you give for the contestants? Moyer: ere are a couple of things. First, don't come with any preconceived notions. Second, remember that we're really only look- ing at IPC standards. Keep an open mind and look for those opportunities to be as efficient as possible with the design. For example, last year when one competitor was doing surface mount, he tried to put all the surface mount parts on one surface because he didn't like to have any parts on the second side. It made the parts spread out and made the routing nearly impossible. Whereas he could have looked at the design and said, "Hey, I've got the whole bottom surface of the board, and I can put those little resistors on the bottom. Now my parts all fit, and my routing is easier." Again, an open mind comes in handy. Follow, and be familiar and comfortable with the IPC standards. Crawford: at's right. What's really interesting is this: We provide a library of IPC standards to the competitors for the prelims. Because we have IPC's DRM protection on them, I can actually go through, and see which contestant has opened them and how many times. For the past two years, there's been a 1:1 correla- tion between how many times the competitor opened their IPC standards vs. how well they do in the scoring of the prelims. at's been true for the past two years, and I anticipate it will be true for this year. So, what's next? Are you all working on the IPC Design Competition for 2025? Crawford: As a matter of fact, we are. is is just a teaser, but next year's IPC Design Competi- tion will be radically different. We've learned a lot over the past three years, and going for- ward, there will be much more emphasis on working in teams. ere will be more emphasis on not just the board design but also product design. It will be completely different. That sounds like fun. Crawford: Yes, and challenging. We're still hammering out the details, but stay tuned. Thank you both. See you at the show. Crawford: ank you, Andy. DESIGN007 Kris Moyer