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PCBD-Sept2017

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10 The PCB Design Magazine • September 2017 Andy Shaughnessy is managing editor of The PCB Design Magazine. He has been covering PCB design for 18 years. He can be reached by clicking here. gineering, and designers need to start seeing themselves as the front end of manufacturing if they're going to support true DFM. How many of you designers consider your- selves to be the front end of manufacturing? Probably not many. You're most likely working at an OEM that may be hundreds or thousands of miles from your fabricator. But as Happy says, when you get down to brass tacks, this is all part of manufacturing. In our feature interview, Happy discusses the importance of predictive engineering in DFM, and why some PCB designers equate a design rules check with DFM guidelines. In our second feature, Happy discusses the history of predic- tive engineering, and how it should be utilized by PCB designers and manufacturers. Next, Mentor's Pat McGoff discusses the evolution of DFM software, and the importance of good DFM processes during new product introduction (NPI). And Hemant Shah and Ed Acheson of Cadence Design Systems focus on new DFM tools that use predictive engineering to provide feedback to designers so errors can be addressed in real-time, not after the design is completed. We also bring you columns by our regular contributors Barry Olney of In-Circuit Design, Jade Bridges of Electrolube, and consultant Tim Haag. On With the Show It's September, and that means it's show time. Assuming Hurricane Irma doesn't disrupt air travel out of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in At- lanta, I'll be heading out to PCB West in Silicon Valley, and then on to Chicago for SMTA Inter- national. I hope to see you all on the road. But if you can't make it, we'll have all the latest news at I-Connect007. Next month, we'll focus on signal integrity. As the old saying goes, "If you don't have sig- nal integrity problems yet, you will." If you're not already a subscriber, click here so you don't miss out! PCBDESIGN REDEFINING DFM For the first time, an international team led by engineers at Caltech has developed a computer chip with nanoscale optical quantum memory. "Such a device is an essential component for the future development of optical quantum networks that could be used to transmit quantum infor - mation," says Andrei Faraon (BS ‹04), assistant professor of applied physics and materials science in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech, and the corresponding author of a paper describing the new chip. The new quantum memory chip is analogous to a tradition - al memory chip in a computer. Both store information in a binary code. With traditional memory, information is stored by flipping billions of tiny electronic switches either on or off, representing either a 1 or a 0. That 1 or 0 is known as a bit. By contrast, quantum memory stores information via the quantum properties of individual elementary particles. A fundamental characteristic of those quantum properties is that they can exist in multiple states at the same time. This means that a quantum bit (a qubit) can represent a 1 and a 0 at the same time. The team also plans to work on ways to integrate the quan - tum memory into more complex circuits, taking the first steps to- ward deploying this technology in quantum networks. First On-chip Nanoscale Optical Quantum Memory Developed

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