Author Archives: Mike

About Mike

Mike Buetow is president of the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (pcea.net). He previously was editor-in-chief of Circuits Assembly magazine, the leading publication for electronics manufacturing, and PCD&F, the leading publication for printed circuit design and fabrication. He spent 21 years as vice president and editorial director of UP Media Group, for which he oversaw all editorial and production aspects. He has more than 30 years' experience in the electronics industry, including six years at IPC, an electronics trade association, at which he was a technical projects manager and communications director. He has also held editorial positions at SMT Magazine, community newspapers and in book publishing. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois. Follow Mike on Twitter: @mikebuetow

Bragging Rights

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I want to call attention today to a great new contest for designers being run by Sunstone Circuits.

The contest works like this: From now until Dec. 16, design engineers can share their PCB-related design success stories online at Sunstone’s website.

Friends and others to the site can vote for the best project. All entrants and voters are entered into a sweepstakes to win a series of prizes, ranging from gift cards to an iPad.

It’s a great way for designers talk (and yes, perhaps, brag) a bit about what they do. And while Sunstone certainly benefits from the exposure, I’m glad to see a company taking steps to highlight the remarkable things designers can do.

‘The Magic One’

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It was 50 years ago today when a then 33-year-old scientist at General Electric invented the first practical visible-spectrum light-emitting diode, a device that GE colleagues at the time called “the magic one” because its light, unlike infrared lasers, was visible to the human eye.

Dr. Nick Holonyak, Jr. could not have known then the door he was opening, but today LEDs are not only the foundation of a massive government-driven push to eliminate the popular (but higher energy consuming) incandescent, but also a potentially enormous market for the manufacturers of LED and driver printed circuit boards at the core of LEDs.

 

LEDs contain metal or graphite core bare boards, generally with lead-free solder paste. They are not easy to rework, on account of their heat-sinking core. The LED components are typically surface-mounted, although some versions have radial-leaded parts, explains Scott Mauldin of LEDnovation, an OEM of residential and industrial LED lighting.

Many PCB and EMS companies have an opportunity to play in this market today, thanks to one man’s bright idea 50 years ago. We owe Holonyak a big round of applause.

Image courtesy Scott Mauldin, LEDnovation

What Should HP Do?

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The news out of Palo Alto isn’t good.

Now, that won’t exactly come as a shock to most observers, as HP has been flat for some time. But CEO Meg Whitman yesterday acknowledged that the pain will intensify before the patient recovers, telling analysts that revenues would fall 11 to 13% over the next fiscal year.

In real dollars, that’s a drop of up to $16.5 billion, roughly the size of Jabil Circuit, or, the companies ranked No. 15 to 50 on the CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY Top 50.

Worse, Whitman said not to expect a turnaround before 2016.

Give Whitman credit for honesty, although keep in mind that, by setting the bar low, she raises the prospects for future knighthood should HP’s recovery come faster.

But what Whitman did not disclose is what, exactly, HP’s prescription for saving itself is. In all likelihood, that strategy will focus on paring of the company’s core product lines — servers, PCs and printer. Perhaps it will follow IBM’s lead and sell or spin off its PC unit, an idea that the company itself has floated in the past.

It says here, however, the company HP should be emulating is Apple. HP once was as respected as any business in the tech industry, admired for its stable and forward-thinking leadership, its commitment to research and development, and a manufacturer of the top rank. Today, that path is more remembrance than reality. The company has long since moved away from its manufacturing roots, outsourcing almost anything it could. (Foxconn has been a major beneficiary.) What HP, along with Dell and many of the other big PC makers, is learning the hard way is, you give away the family jewels at your own peril. By offloading its fixed assets — and that includes its people — HP also gave away its competitive advantage. It’s become a parody of itself, a business confined to imitation, not innovation. Sure, HP has to retool, but it should do so by going back to its roots, much like Apple did when Steve Jobs was welcomed back after 11 years wandering the desert.

“Invent” was a favorite marketing campaign of HP. The company should practice what it preaches, bring design and manufacturing back in-house, and strive to be the technology leader it once was. It can be done. But HP has to be committed to the task.

 

Heads in the Cloud

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DigiTimes is reporting that companies like Quanta are working with cloud computing developers to offer turnkey solutions, selling storage space to design and manufacturing customers.

What DigiTimes did not report, however, is that such arrangements extend to PCB CAD tool providers. In fact, Quanta is offering one major CAD tool vendor’s PCB software via the cloud. Users can access the tool on a fee for use basis.

What’s scary about this arrangement is the potential for havoc should a dispute arise between Quanta and its customers. Access to designs — in process or legacy — is critical, and if a design needs to be respun at 11 PM on a Sunday night, and the OEM doesn’t have easy access to the server for whatever reason, that’s going to be a problem.

Outsiders Taking Over

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Is the bloom off the rose in Vietnam?

The Vietnam News Service is reporting that with many businesses shifting from production to imports, Vietnam’s electronics industry is “standing on the verge of extinction.” More than 90% of the nation’s electronics exports are performed by foreign-based countries, the Viet Nam Electronics Business Association maintains. Meanwhile, major OEMs are closing domestic plants and switching to an import model to serve Vietnamese customers.

For those who see Vietnam as an alternative to China, this is not the wakeup call they expected.

Fun and Sun in Santa Clara

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Just a terrific week at PCB West in Santa Clara last week. It was great seeing old friends like Gary Ferrari, Susy Webb and Rick Hartley, and of course, for the first time in a few years, Doug Brooks. The weather was great, the show was even better –attendance was up 10% over last year (take that, stupid economy!) and the sold-out floor was bursting at the seams much of the day.

And I couldn’t be associated with a finer, harder working group of people than my colleagues at UP Media.

I’ll have more up soon on the show itself, but for now, it’s all smiles here.

Cadence: All Sync’d Up

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Cadence today announced the release of point revisions to both Allegro and OrCAD, continuing its tradition of keeping releases of its major platforms in sync. They show significant upgrades in timing speeds and simulation speeds, respectively, as well as better use of state-of-the-art collaboration tools.

To the latter point, Hemant Shah, the product marketing manager for Allegro, says the point releases are a reflection of changes Cadence sees in the user base. ODMs are evolving to “parallelism,” he told me. “That’s where we learned the EDA tools were not designed for parallelism and needed to be rethought.” As a result, Cadence adopted Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration tools, giving users a greater control over different versions and WIP design data management.

It was interesting to hear a major software vendor acknowledge that not everything developed in-house would or could be best in class. Likewise, Shah said that the company’s recent acquisition of Sigrity reaffirms the management’s commitment to the PCB space — something its competitors have questioned from time to time.

He added that the future releases leverage Sigrity’s power and SI technology across both the existing platforms and in Sigrity’s standalone products.

No Laugh Riot

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Like the NFL officiating, it just keeps getting worse.

At least 40 Foxconn workers are reportedly in Chinese hospitals today following a late night riot at the company’s massive campus in Taiyuan, a city in northern China.

Workers apparently took matters into their own hands after company guards reportedly badly beat at least one employee. Photos from the scene uploaded to China’s version of Twitter, which Chinese official moved quickly to censor, showed hundreds of employees and police in riot gear, and in one case, an overturned guard building.

Many blue-chip OEMs rely on Foxconn to manage the better part of their supply chain, and have continued to do so despite longstanding accusations of worker abuse. Apple, so far, has survived the heat, although the flames get hotter by the day. But for struggling companies like Dell and HP, the question must again be asked: Is this relationship good for your brand? Or is it time to take a stand against what is clearly an counterproductive business plan?

PCB West: Are You Ready?

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It’s here.

PCB West opens on Tuesday at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The annual conference and exhibition is the Silicon Valley’s largest electronics design and manufacturing trade show of the year, and this year’s preregistration is running about 7% above last year’s numbers.

We are ecstatic to be back in Santa Clara, and are looking forward to this year’s program. Highlights of the 55-presentation conference include several talks on RF and microwave design and materials, flex design and fabrication, and the return of Doug Brooks as a presenter for the first time in three years.

The emerging assembly “conference within a conference” covers everything from package-on-package and bottom termination components to Eric Miscoll’s presentation on the latest trends between electronics manufacturing services providers and their OEM customers.

The show floor is sold out, and every leading design software company will be there, plus several top fabricators and EMS companies of all sizes. Be sure to turn out on Sept. 26 for “Free Wednesday,” when we feature several technical presentations and our New Product Introduction awards. (That’s also the the exhibition is open.)

The show takes place Sept. 25-27. Register at pcbwest.com, and if you see me walking the show, be sure to say “hi.”

PCB West Next Week

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As most of you (hopefully) know, PCB West is next week. The annual conference and trade show, now in its 21st year, is the biggest and best event for the electronics design, fabrication and assembly in the Silicon Valley.

Here’s what Dave Ryder, president of Prototron Circuits, has to say about PCB West: “We have been coming to this show for a number of years now and we never fail to pick up some very good and productive leads. In fact, last year we were so busy that we barely had time to eat lunch. With all of the PCB designers attending the conference it makes this a great show for us who are in the quickturn prototype business.”

PCB West takes place Sept. 25 to 27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The exhibition, which is free to attend (be sure to preregister at pcbwest.com), is Sept. 26. The show floor is sold out. Check it out!