News

Altium has announced an open beta program for their community-driven PCB design tool. CircuitMaker will be available worldwide to all interested electronics designers, and aims to address the unique needs of the electronics maker and hobbyist community with a free software offering. Anyone interested in participating in the open beta can register now at the CircuitMaker website, with invitations being sent out early next week

“We’re incredibly excited to see how the CircuitMaker community will grow and evolve during this open beta program,” said Ben Jordan, Product Manager at Altium. “The electronics maker community has always been characterized by a very organic and collaborative growth process, and now electronics designers of all…

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 80.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014, a year-on-year decline of 2.4%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Total shipments were slightly above expectations of -4.8% growth, but the market still contracted both year on year and in comparison to the third quarter.

Although the holiday quarter saw shipment volume inch above 80 million for the first time in 2014, the final quarter nonetheless marked the end of yet another difficult year – the third consecutive year with overall volumes declining. On an annual basis, 2014 shipments totaled 308.6 million units, down 2.1% from the prior year.

Although the U.S. and Europe remained stronger than other markets, growth in these mature…

Register Now for the January 13 DFMStream Webinar

Wednesday, January 07, 2015 | DownStream Technologies

At this webinar, attendees will learn about DFMStream, the new product from DownStream Technologies that provides powerful DFM capabilities in an easy-to- use environment. DFMStream bridges the gap between engineering and fabrication, helps save valuable time and reduces bottlenecks.

The Webinar will demonstrate the Design Analyzer, the new Paste Mask analysis, new features available in Streams Rule Checking, and all the new checks we have developed and announced in Release 11.

DFMStream uses a “Stream” file to queue a series of DFM analysis checks and can combine netlist or layer comparison, design rule verification, fabrication and assembly…

Electronic Design and Microwaves&RF are providing a webcast discussing PCB materials, simulations, and measurements for 32 Gb/s.  

Why this Webcast is Important:

Breaking the 32 Gb/s barrier for printed circuit board (PCB) channels requires a strong understanding of PCB stack-up design, simulation methods, and measurement techniques.  How a PCB fabrication document calls out the materials, such as fiber weave and surface roughness, is critical to high speed performance.  Accuracies of channel performance time and frequency domain simulations at the higher data rates require knowledge of as-fabricated material properties and tolerances.  Design and measurement of test structures to validate the PCB stack-up performance require custom…

PCB layout begins with a schematic. The schematic can be a simple paper drawing on simple boards or captured in a CAD program for more complex boards. The connections on the PCB should be identical to the schematic, but while the schematic is arranged to be readable, the PCB layout is arranged to be functional. As a result, there is rarely any visible correlation between the schematic and the layout.

PCB layout can be performed manually (using a CAD tool such as Altium Designer, PADs, or Allegro), or in combination with an Autorouter. The best results are usually achieved using or manual routing because the design engineer can exercise better judgment of how to arrange circuitry than an autorouter program is able to.…