Engineering News

Read the latest news and information for pcb design enineers.

NVIDIA Arm deal

The NVIDIA-Arm Deal Will Expand PCB Hardware for AI and Deep Learning Read more about the recent NVIDIA-ARM deal and what it means for PCB designers. Read Article

Neuromorphic computing robotics

Neuromorphic Computing Chips Make Transistors Feel Obsolete Intel’s upcoming platform for neuromorphic computing, the Loihi neuromorphic processor, reflects a broader trend in the AI hardware community, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the packaging. The Loihi processor packs major changes to the underlying transistor architecture and uses a unique signaling method used for computation. Intel’s products and other chips from hardware startups are starting to resemble the functionality in the human Read Article

Quantum networking

DOE Releases Roadmap for Quantum Networking and Quantum Internet Now with quantum computing going mainstream, quantum networking is on the horizon. Here’s how this differs from classical networking. Read Article

Coming Soon: Altium CircuitMaker Pro®

Coming Soon: Altium CircuitMaker Pro® In 2015, Altium released Altium CircuitStudio® to best meet the needs of casual users, hobbyists, students, and PCB design aficionados on a budget. Learn about the new version coming to the public! Read Article

Chip for the most powerful quantum computer 2020

Honeywell Claims the Most Powerful Analog Quantum Computer of 2020 Quantum computing is about more than qubit count. See why Honeywell claims to have the most powerful quantum computer of 2020. Read Article

US Department of Transportation Seeking Alternatives to GPS

US Department of Transportation Seeking Alternatives to Advanced Navigation GPS GPS-capable devices range from your phone to your smartwatch; simply type in your destination and follow the directions. Simple, right? According to the Washington Post, we should all stop using GPS as it’s ruining the navigation centers of our brains. Despite the neurological effects on perception and judgment, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) aims to find alternatives to GPS to provide redundancy. What started as a defense initiative Read Article

Stealth Aircraft, Meet Quantum Radar

Stealth Aircraft, Meet Quantum Radar If you read Max Clivefield's recent article on quantum computing and quantum communication, then you've got a head start on most when it comes to understanding entanglement. These esoteric areas of technology are likely to become more common in the coming decades, and could revolutionize modern technology. I'm skeptical that we'll have desktop quantum computers or quantum cell phones, but these new technologies are worth developing as they have Read Article

PCB Additive Manufacturing and supply chain volatility

PCB Additive Manufacturing: The Vaccine for Electronics Supply Shocks? At this time, at least a quarter of the world’s population is under quarantine, with workers unable to go to offices or factories, leading to fundamental disabling of the world economy. The electronics industry is suffering greatly as well, dealing with a supply shock from factories shutting down in Southeast Asia, to demand-side shocks from Western markets literally shutting down. Worst of all, the COVID-19 pandemic has created an enormous Read Article

Altium Designer 20.1 + Altium 365 Available Now!

Altium 365 + Altium Designer 20.1 Released Today - Work from Anywhere, Connect with Anyone Altium 365 is the world’s only cloud platform for printed circuit board design and realization. Seamlessly accessible from Altium Designer 19 (and up), it provides the most connected experience with Altium Designer 20.1. Altium 365 and Altium Designer 20.1 - now available Altium 365 creates seamless collaboration points across the entire PCB development process, making it the most connected design experience in the industry. Altium Designer users Read Article

Are We Poised on the Brink of a New Age?

Are We Poised on the Brink of a New Age? A new material shaped like a one-dimensional DNA helix can be used to build transistors with diameters of only two nanometers. Read Article

The Moon by 2024, Mars by 2040, and Then?

The Moon by 2024, Mars by 2040, and Then? It seems the chances are improving that we will one day become a true space-faring species. Read Article

Arduino Portenta H7 Brings Dev Boards to Production Grade

Arduino Portenta H7 Brings Dev Boards to Production Grade When I hear the name “Arduino,” I don’t usually think of production-grade hardware. I’m not talking down to the folks at Arduino, they’ve done an excellent job at invading the educational and proof-of-concept development niches, to the extent that other hardware platforms simply haven’t been able to catch up. Arduino boards are an excellent choice for low volume functional prototyping and embedded software development. But what about production Read Article

GaN MMIC Power Amplifier Market Outlook and Applications

GaN MMIC Power Amplifier Market Outlook and Applications The next smartphone you buy is likely to include a GaN MMIC power amplifier for wireless communication. What was formerly relegated to academia is now seeing fast commercialization. These developments aren’t limited to smartphones, although this is expected to account for a significant portion of the growing RF components market. High frequency radar in automotive, aerospace, and even robotics is expected to be a significant driver of further GaN Read Article

PCBs vs. Multichip Modules, Chiplets, and Silicon Interconnect Fabric

PCBs vs. Multichip Modules, Chiplets, and Silicon Interconnect Fabric 2019 saw a resurgence in talk of multichip modules, chiplets, and silicon interconnect fabric. An article in the September issue of IEEE Spectrum claimed that silicon interconnect fabric, a method for connecting chiplets on a multichip module, would eliminate PCBs and bulky SoCs for many applications, specifically motherboards. Will any of this ever come to pass? Obviously, we can’t know the future, but designers should be aware of changes in the Read Article

Getting Closer to Generating Unlimited Power with Artificial Suns

Getting Closer to Creating an Unlimited Power Source with Artificial Suns Graphical representation of a Tokamak fusion reactor (Image source: pixabay.com) Many of us spend a lot of time patting ourselves on the back and telling ourselves how clever we are as a species. We often hear claims that the total sum of human knowledge is doubling every ‘X’ years, where the value of ‘X’ depends on who you are talking to. The inventor and visionary Richard Buckminster Fuller originated the concept of the “Knowledge Doubling Read Article

Smart Tweezers are Cunningly Clever

Smart Tweezers are Cunningly Clever You think you don't need smart tweezers, until you read this. The problem with engineers is that we can never have too many tools. Read Article

The Embedded Vision Alliance is No More

The Embedded Vision Alliance is No More What is “Edge AI”? Powerful new technology had become ready for widespread use, however the companies and developers creating systems and applications are still struggling to figure out how to best incorporate it into their products. Read Article