December 2017 • The PCB Design Magazine 73
5
Nancy Jaster Brings
Manufacturing, Design
Background to Designers Council
Nancy Jaster was recently
named the head of the IPC De-
signers Council. At the recent
AltiumLive 2017 event, Barry
Matties spoke with Nancy
about her unique background
in both design and manufac-
turing, and how she hopes to use that experience
and mindset to revitalize the Designers Council
going forward, particularly with the International
and student chapters. We also discussed her plans
to bring more young people, particularly women,
into the industry.
6
Video from productronica 2017:
Karel Tavernier on Ucamco's
New Communic8tor
European Editor Pete
Starkey and Ucamco
Managing Director
Karel Tavernier discuss
Ucamco's cloud-based
Communic8tor plat-
form which facilitates two-way communication
between the CAM engineer and the PCB designer,
or any other party involved in the manufacturing
process. This gives real-time access to image data
and annotations, enabling queries to be resolved,
changes to be approved, and a full communica-
tions history to be maintained.
7
Beyond Design: When Do Traces
Become Transmission Lines?
At low frequencies, traces and components on a
PCB behave simply as lossless lumped elements—
as taught in Circuit Theory 101. But as the fre-
quency increases, the copper trace and adjacent
dielectric(s) become a transmission line, the skin
effect forces current into the outer regions of the
conductor and frequency-dependent losses im-
pact on the quality of the signal. The PCB trace
now behaves as a distributed system with parasitic
inductance and capacitance characterized by de-
lay and scattered reflections.
8
Bay Area Circuits Updates
InstantDFM Tool
Bay Area Circuits is on a quest to help PCB design-
ers and design engineers. For the past few years,
the company has been holding facility tours and
open house events to help designers understand
more about the fabrication process. At PCB West,
I spoke with President Stephen Garcia and COO
Brian Paper about their recent design tool update,
and some of the other services they offer for PCB
designers.
9
Cadence Appoints Anirudh
Devgan as President
Dr. Devgan will report to Lip-
Bu Tan, Cadence chief execu-
tive officer. Together, they will
further the company's System
Design Enablement strategy
by accelerating the momen-
tum in the core EDA business
and delivering to the expand-
ing needs of its growing customer base.
J
Signal Integrity:
The Experts Weigh In
When we began planning our issue on signal in-
tegrity, we arranged a conference call with a va-
riety of industry experts. Mike Steinberger of Si-
Soft, Mark Thompson of Prototron Circuits, and
Yogen and Sunny Patel of Candor Industries joined
editors Andy Shaughnessy, Patty Goldman, Happy
Holden and Publisher Barry Matties on the call for
a spirited discussion about the challenges related
to signal integrity and some of the tricks of the
trade for helping ensure SI.
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