Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/834021
20 The PCB Magazine • June 2017 Conclusion Compunetics' parent company, Compu- netix, Inc., is the leading manufacturer of mul- tipoint collaboration equipment with the in- dustry's largest worldwide deployment of digi- tal conferencing systems in both the commer- cial and mission critical government markets. Their OEM products epitomize the benefits gained from employing buried capacitance lay - ers. The circuit board's mass and profile are greatly reduced; the power delivered instan- taneously from the capacitive layer otherwise wouldn't be supplied fast enough with con- ventional decoupling capacitors. Additionally, signal integrity is preserved and noise is mini- mized. These high-speed, reliable products fa- cilitate mission-critical operations for the Unit- ed States government, as well as preserve our national security . PCB Jesse Ward is technical applications manager with Compunetics, Inc. A BRIEF TUTORIAL ON EMBEDDED CAPACITORS Figure 6: Servers such as these utilize buried capacitance in their PCBs. Source: Oak-Mitsui Malware, the collective name for viruses, Tro- jan horses and other malicious software, has been all over the news lately. Over the years, malware has evolved; it can affect smartphones and tablets as well as all computers. No matter what you hear from the fake news outlets, no computer, no brand, and no type is 100% safe. Malware on a computer is as old as the first com- puters. In fact, the first computer virus was called Elk Cloner and was found on an early Apple Mac in 1982. Back in the day, a few years after I first started using a personal computer (an Apple II+ in 1979- 80), the first virus strains were spread by infec- tion obtained through inserting a contaminated floppy disk into your computer. Viruses spread globally but this took many months, sometimes years. Now we have the Internet and a zillion more PC users, and the incentive for those who produce malware is no longer mischief or exper- imentation. There is now a large financial incen- tive as seen with the explosion of the latest ran- somware, the WannaCry malware. I will cover malware in more depth overall in articles over the next few months, but for now, let's focus on the two most widely and common- ly seen contaminations, and the most dangerous and expensive to eradicate today—at least once you have been infected—and the browser lock- up junior version which can be frightening but which is much easier to fix. I know that all of you do back-ups of your computer's data on a regular basis, right? Right? Click here to read the entire column. Fein-Lines: Virus, Phishing, Ransomware...Oh My!