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18 The PCB Design Magazine • June 2017 and things like that and crossing that density level, how many IOs per square centimeter or whatever. On one hand was conventional sur- face mount and the other was embedded. We did that too; we developed those same kinds of models. The other thing that took place was min- iaturization, for example in cellphones. These costs that you're talking about are basically area pricing. As the resistors got smaller and smaller, the amount of material that's in a cellphone is minuscule. They're so very small that a ten- inch by ten-inch material would be enough for thousands of cellphones. Miniaturization also made this economically feasible. Believe me, the cellphone manufacturers have very tight production cost schedules. The combination of miniaturization and the use of resistive layers is to avoid adding more layers or to go to more complex-type printed circuit, like HDI. If you could postpone going to HDI by embedding a layer, then there is a savings. It's not a surface mount versus resistor layer model. You're look- ing at the total system cost of reducing that and cost tradeoff. In terms of design tools and fabrication, one of the things we do is provide excellent tech support all over the world. We have very good distribution representation in Asia. We can go in and provide all kinds of tech support both in the initial phase in the design, working with the CAD guys and the CAM guys. There are all kinds of unique applications. There are resistors you wouldn't recognize as resistors. Also, my job here is to `give away the process technology and to provide help with process - ing. Fortunately, most of that is standard and they don't really need a lot of new equipment. If they can do controlled impedance they can make resistors. But that's an area we're doing really well on—maybe I'm biased, of course. But we do provide design support and tech support, and we provide it all over the world. Now is the cost of the materials, the laminate, going to go up? You bet it is. But the tradeoff in how the design changes at the end of the line, and I agree that's very difficult to model, but an old break-even chart with how many resistors per square inch, I don't consider that relevant anymore. We're in an area now where we're being used because there's no other way to do it. That's what is driv- ing this whole thing and there are tradeoffs and costs. Figure 2: Sample input for embedded passives cost analysis software. A DEEP LOOK INTO EMBEDDED TECHNOLOGY