Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/969348
20 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2018 traditionally involved with automotive manu- facturing or design. That shows you not only the potential from a technology point of view, but from a business point of view. I think a lot of companies see great profit opportunities by investing in all the different areas around auto- motive. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out in the next five years. Shaughnessy: Are your customers using Zuken tools on autonomous or electric vehicles, or do you expect them to? Mandavia: That is already being done in vari- ous capacities. Our customers are designing their electronics and electrical systems using our tools today. I think most OEMs are already either directly working with or partnering with other companies like Nvidia or Google to start solving some of the key challenges around this capability. The electronics are already being worked on, and they have been for the last few years. There is clearly a sense of urgency in the automotive space, so I think most everyone has already started doing that work. We do have several customers designing the electronics for these technologies. What we're seeing on our side, because of autonomous technology, is model-based systems engineer- ing and architectural planning, and the need to co-design across disciplines. It's already hit- ting critical mass for the electronic side. You can't effectively design these complex elec- tronic systems without clear requirements, the traceability of those requirements, and being able to do quick validation with changes from the architectural planning side for your model- based design. Many of our customers are already pushing us to make sure of that, either at the detail stage, at the planning stage or at the MBSE stage. Shaughnessy: I noticed that your design envi- ronment for automotive is 3D. Do you think 3D is here to stay? That it's not an option any- more, but kind of the standard? Mandavia: If you consider all the challenges and constraints involved in PCB design for automotive, a native 3D environment is a necessity. From conceptual and prototype designs, to final production implementation, designers need to consider the interaction and relationship of their PCB to other PCBs in the system, chip and package design, mechanical design, and the ability to understand the com- plete assembly within the ECAD environment to optimize the design and performance of the PCB and the system. Working in a 2D envi- ronment with post-processed 3D views is no longer sufficient. Zuken's CR-8000 is the only native 3D design environment with support for system-level and multi-domain design required for automotive. Shaughnessy: What do you think is going to happen in the next three or five years or so regarding automotive electronics?