Engineering News

IEEE P370 high speed interconnect standard

The IEEE P370 Standard for High Speed PCB Interconnects Signal integrity engineers should pay attention to the IEEE P370 standard for characterizing interconnects out to 50 GHz. Read Article

California electric cars

California Bets on Electric Cars and Plans to Ban Gasoline Car Sales by 2035 Governor Gavin Newsome is betting on California electric cars. Get ready for a big shift in PMIC and battery markets. 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

Altium Launches Refer-a-Friend Rewards Program

Altium Launches Refer-a-Friend Rewards Program Way back in the summer of 2020, we ran a survey on the Altium Designer home page for a few months. The survey asked Altium Designer users, "How likely are you to recommend Altium Designer to friends and colleagues?" (with ten meaning extremely likely). The vast majority of users responded with 9 and 10. We were pretty overwhelmed by this positive feedback. Thank you to all who participated. We want to do more to say thank you to customers who use 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 shutting down. Worst of all, the COVID-19 pandemic has created an enormous demand for 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

Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide

Level Up Your Design Skills - Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide We are happy to announce the release of the new Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. Whether you are new to Altium Designer or you want to brush up on some topics, the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide will take you from a beginner to a master in PCB design. This is only the beginning! This guide will be updated with new information based on user feedback. Let’s first go over the contents of the guide. 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 (2023 Update) An article in the September 2019 issue of IEEE Spectrum claimed that silicon interconnect fabric, a method for connecting chiplets on a multichip module or advanced package, would eliminate PCBs and bulky SoCs for many applications, specifically motherboards. It's now 2023, and no one seems to have ditched PCBs yet; the demand for PCBs remains as strong as ever and is still projected to grow at double-digit CAGR. This is despite the expected Read Article