Engineering News

Read the latest news and information for pcb design enineers.

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 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

Additive PCB manufacturing and supply chain volatility

Additive PCB 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 Generating Unlimited Power 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

One Step Closer to Mapping the Human Brain

One Step Closer to Mapping the Human Brain Believe it or not a technology to render 3D map of a brain does exist! Read now to learn more. Read Article

The Resurgence of Retro Display Technologies

The Resurgence of Retro Display Technologies Let's talk about the evolution of electronics display. From analog to digital display and also retro display and nixie tubes. Do you prefer the old fashion way? Read Article

Can You Hear Me Now?

Can You Hear Me Now? Depending on your background and personal experiences, two things may spring to mind when you hear the term “cocktail party problem.” The first is you thinking, “there are never enough cocktails to satisfy everyone’s requirements,” but maybe I’m projecting again. Alternatively, you may be considering how difficult it is for an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled voice-controlled assistant like Amazon’s Alexa to follow individual voices when a Read Article

There’s a Lot of Quantum About These Days

There’s a Lot of Quantum About These Days It’s disconcerting to discover how much remains unknown at the quantum level (Image source: pixabay.com) I just heard that China has developed the world’s first mobile quantum satellite communications station. At first, I didn’t know what to think about this news, but this is largely because I don’t understand “quantum.” Much of modern physics is based on two incredibly sophisticated and successful theories: general relativity and quantum Read Article

Virtual Reality + Waterpark = Awesomeness!

Virtual Reality + Waterpark = Awesomeness! Virtual reality snorkeling (Image source: screenshot from Wiegand Waterrides video) Almost every day, I'm exposed to an idea that stops me in my tracks and makes me say "Wow!" Just a few minutes ago as I pen these words, for example, my chum John in the UK (see also On Mushrooms, Socks, and Ducks) sent me an email containing naught but a link and a smiley face. Since I couldn’t do much with the smiley face, I clicked on the link, only to discover Read Article