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34 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2025 Beyond Design Feature Column by Barry Olney, IN-CIRCUIT DESIGN PTY LTD / AUSTRALIA Predicting the role of PCB designers in 10 years is a challenge. If only I had a crystal ball. However, we know that as technology pro- gresses, the limitations of copper PCBs are increasingly apparent, particularly regarding speed, bandwidth, and signal integrity. Inno- vations such as optical interconnects and pho- tonic integrated circuits are setting the stage for the next generation of PCBs, delivering higher performance and efficiency. e future of PCB design will probably incorporate these new technologies to address the challenges of traditional copper-based designs. e prevailing trend in the PCB industry is a growing demand for smaller, lighter, flex- ible, and higher-performance PCBs. is trend began in the late 1980s with the mainstream adoption of surface mount technology. Shortly aer, high density interconnects (HDI) became widespread, allowing denser inte- grated devices with closer placement. With the recent advent of artificial intelligence (AI), we face limitations in data rates, bandwidth, and power consumption. NVIDIA, the leader in AI chip development, recently released its Black- well B200 graphics processing unit (GPU). NVIDIA says its systems can scale to tens of thousands of these Superchips running at 720 petaflops (one quadrillion or 10 15 operations per second), connected via 800 Gbps network- ing using the new Quantum-X800 InfiniBand. e bottleneck lies in the interconnects between these ultra-high-speed devices. Cop- per interconnects can only transfer information at a limited speed and bandwidth with minimal loss. Since the electromagnetic energy trans- porting the signals in a PCB propagates in the dielectric materials, not the copper traces, we need to improve the efficiency of the dielec- tric. e limitations lie in the dielectric con- Electro- optical Circuit Boards