Electronics Industry Insights for PCB Designers and Engineers

| Created: February 16, 2023 | Updated: November 26, 2023

February 10, 2023

ONTRACK BI-WEEKLY

As the electronic industry conference season rolls on, companies are grappling with a shifting supply chain landscape and disruptive technologies in AI, energy, and wireless.

Leading Insights

Apple Takes Greater Control of its Supply Chain

Apple will be the first to revolutionize its supply chain by incorporating more of their in-house built chipsets into new products. Will other tech companies follow suit?

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ChatGPT Writes a Law to Regulate Itself

The new law, written by ChatGPT, has been introduced in the US Congress as a nonbinding measure by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).

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IEEE Panel Discusses Move Into D-band

At IEEE Radio and Wireless Week, panelists discussed the next frontier of wireless technology reaching D-band frequencies (110-170 GHz).

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Largest SiC Fab to be Built in Germany

Wolfspeed and ZF Friedrichshafen announce they will build the world’s largest SiC fabrication facility to support power electronics systems.

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Could Your Water Heater Become a Battery?

When you do a cost and energy density comparison against electrochemical batteries, water heaters start to look like superior energy storage systems.

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Trending Resources

LATEST DESIGN RESOURCES

How to Design a Coaxial Probe Feed for a Patch Antenna

By Zachariah Peterson

It’s possible to place coax + SMA feeds directly into patch antennas as long as the probe location is determined correctly. Zach breaks down how to determine the optimal probe location in this article.

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LATEST DESIGN RESOURCES

PCB Stackup Basics

By Phil Salmony

New designers often ask: which layer in a stackup should be signal, PWR, or GND? Phil offers some tips for layer selection and building a stackup for a multilayer PCB.

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FROM THE VAULT

Working with Design Variants

By John Watson

Design variants, or assembly variants, help you keep track of component placements and DNP’d components in a PCBA.

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FROM THE VAULT

Bluetooth 5.1 SoC vs. Module: Which is Best for Your Design?

By Zachariah Peterson

Even today, BLE SoCs are still very popular components, but there are also pre-built modules available. Which of these is best to use in your new design?

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ONTRACK PODCAST

PCBAA Returns to the OnTrack Podcast

We welcome Travis Kelly, CEO of Isola Group and President of PCBAA, back to the OnTrack Podcast. In this episode, Travis and Zach discuss how the conversation surrounding CHIPS Act funding has shifted beyond semiconductors and the path forward for growing geographically diversified PCB production capacity.

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HACKSMITH INDUSTRIES

Giant Spider Mechs With Hacksmith

Our friends at Hacksmith Industries always go big with their projects. Come see what they’ve built with Altium Designer: a giant 6-legged mechanical walker named Megahex!

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NEW VIDEOS AND TUTORIALS

Hands-on with a Dual ADC Module Project

Zach shows how to complete a PCB layout for a dual ADC module that includes isolated and non-isolated ADCs. Watch now and download the project source files!

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Create the Perfect Electronics Enclosure with Altium and SolidWorks

Ready to design a 3D printed enclosure for your electronics? Follow Mark Harris as he shows how to use the CoDesigner extension for enclosure.

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ALTIUM ACADEMY

Weekly Webinars

Altium is pleased to offer free weekly webinars that cover basic and advanced challenges that designers and PCB engineers face. Sign up for free today!

► Effectively Using Design Reuse Blocks

Sourcing Insights

Spectra, an Altium business unit, is a suite of interactive data products that unites the industry-wide information flowing through the Nexar ecosystem. Created from over 300 billion design and supply chain data points, coupled with a machine learning framework, Spectra delivers an unmatched understanding of the industry landscape.

Expected Outcomes

Empower your design & component engineers with supply chain data to create resilient BOMs

Empower your procurement team to reduce expedites through knowing restocks and destocks

Mitigate disruptions through actionable supply chain data

Ensure continuity of supply through deep understanding of future market conditions

Allow granular data analysis for industry specific reporting

Spectra’s Latest Featured Category: IMUs
Demand for these small sensors is growing, with market reports indicating 6%-9% CAGR.

The y-axis of this chart is defined to be the number of pieces of IMUs in stock at franchised distributors with publicly available inventory information and computed relative to a baseline measured in January 2020, similar to how the US Consumer Price Index is computed. For example, the IMU supply index for January 2021 indicates a 42 (normalized to 100) ratio of the baseline number of pieces of IMUs in stock distributors in January 2020, which indicates a decline of 58% as compared to the baseline. What is very intriguing is the sudden increase from a single-digit supply index, which indicates market-level shortages, to a 260 point index in December 2022, which represents 160% increase of IMU inventory at franchised distributors, as compared to the inventory level in January 2020.

Read the full article on IMUs