Remembering Finch

Zuken has compiled a number of touching sentiments from friends of the late Alan Finch, credited with developing the first shape-based autorouter.

Finch, of course, wrote the landmark paper that followed up his Racal-Redac colleague Ulrich Lauther, who conceived a router with no defined cell size.

Look closely and there’s a mention of Pete Waddell, UPMG president and an admirer of Finch.

 

PCU Goes Live!

As “Dean Pete” (I think Professor Pete sounds better) intimated earlier today, we have just gone live with Printed Circuit University, the industry’s first online e-learning and training resource for professionals involved in the engineering and design of printed circuit boards and related technologies.

Printed Circuit University is built on the robust, established and time-proven beTheSignal e-learning platform, and features instruction by SI guru Dr. Eric Bogatin.

Pete and VP of Sales and Marketing Frances Stewart are demonstrating Printed Circuit University this week at DesignCon in the Santa Clara. Be sure to stop by and take a look at what promises to be the future of printed circuit board design education and training.

Design to Win

Glad to see Mentor is continuing with its annual Technology Leadership Awards competition.

The program, which has been around since 1988, uses a panel of judges to select the best designs in six end-product categories. (The only catch is that you have to use Mentor’s software; not sure what would happen if someone tried to enter a design using, say, OrCad. But since you send in screen shots, it would be self-evident.)

Apply online at mentor.com/go/tla.

Oh, and our own Pete Waddell is a judge. But don’t let that stop you.