One reason for that is the intense focus on what the industry needs in terms of training. Another is, besides the educational aspects, it can be fun, surprising and occasionally even provocative.
Years ago, the conference founder Pete Waddell introduced a session called EDA Face-to-Face, where CAD vendors took to the stage and addressed questions straight-on from their users. As you might imagine, the back-and-forth sometimes got a little heated. One particular memory includes a couple users, fed up with the lack of bidirectional electronic data transfer, roiling the crowd with their public callout of the major ECAD companies for not modifying their tools to permit data in.
Eventually the vendors stopped volunteering to participate. But over time, it should be noted, they eventually started offering bidirectional data capability. Sometimes being loud matters.
As AI makes its move into ECAD, PCEA has kept up by introducing the AI Roadmap for Electronics and adding presentations on AI to our array of conferences. Panelists for our presentations were typically vendors, and they did a nice job promoting the potential of the technology.
This year, however, we are taking a page from the past and shifting the spotlight to the users. On Oct. 1 (aka Free Wednesday) this year, the theme of one of our panels is “What Users Really Think of Today’s AI.” The esteemed group features a pair of designers, an assembler and a supply chain expert. The panelists have examined the various AI-assisted tools for their companies, and the goal is to help enlighten those slower to adopt what works – and what doesn’t. Expect some surprises!
I’m equally excited for the Free Wednesday session on “The Future of PCB Design: Looking 2-5 Years Ahead, What is Coming?” Like the panel, the talk will touch on AI. Still, the larger focus will be on other changes ahead, including heterogeneous packaging, textile-integrated microelectronic systems, high-speed/high-current, optics and even the future origin of designers. If you want to know where the industry – and possibly your career – is headed, you’ll want to catch this session.
Not to bury the lede, but the panels sandwich this year’s keynote, which promises to be scintillating. While past addresses have featured CEOs of major ECAD companies and leading technologists at companies like Meta, I honestly can’t recall a time we’ve invited a leader from a startup to take center stage.
Until this year, I mean.
I’m excited to announce Jackson Schultz, head of engineering at Rainmaker, as keynote of PCB West 2025.
Schultz leads the design and integration of Rainmaker’s autonomous cloud seeding system, which is grabbing attention across a stream of major media outlets, not to mention private equity firms, which have funded the company to the point it is moving into a 70,000 sq. ft. facility this fall.
With a background in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with Anduril and test instrumentation architecture with Regent Craft, Schultz is exquisitely suited to describing the range of atmospheric sensors, flight controls, lidar, radar and other technologies used in the pioneering company’s weather radar and modeling techniques.
Schultz hits the podium at 11 a.m. on Oct. 1, so be sure to arrive early.
And while you’re at the show, stop by the PCEA booth or grab one of the staff or board members with a PCEA badge and share your input. It’s what we’re here for!
To register, just scan the code below:
Mike Buetow is president of PCEA (pcea.net); This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Nearly 15 years have passed since Solyndra went out of business, but its specter hangs over the US government to this day as a warning of the risk of federal intrusion in a capitalist world.
Solyndra, of course, represented the US’s attempt to bolster the sustainable energy industry, specifically solar. The intentions were noble: solar was seen as a safe respite from combustible sources like oil and natural gas, which are expensive, nonrenewable and dirty.
But corruption and mismanagement conspired to drain its coffers. The resulting bankruptcy ultimately cost taxpayers more than $500 million in unreimbursed loans.
Read more: Electronics are Everywhere – Except US Policy Priorities
The question was put forth at Siemens’ EDA Tech Day in May: Which of the following can be replaced by AI?
Input
Schematic
Footprints
Placement
Routing
Deliverables (DfM, validation, etc.).
It was posed by a user who indicated that routing takes up about 30% of the time of a typical design spin. In classical Pareto thinking, that makes it the best target for process improvement.
Among the many surprises at PCB East this spring was the appearance of a pair of scientists from a semi-obscure (to we laypeople) government contractor called, obliquely, JLab.
JLab is shorthand for Jefferson Lab, or its official name, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). The facility is operated on behalf of the US Department of Energy, which has a budget larger than Jabil or Flex, and oversees, among other things, the US nuclear arsenal.
Now, in the event you haven’t been paying attention, the US government has been in the media kind of often of late, for reasons too numerous for this page to detail. But one big newsworthy item has been the administration’s efforts to change the federal government’s budget priorities.
Certainly, most readers are familiar by now with the Chips Act, the overarching legislation passed in fall 2022 that authorized more than $50 billion in direct spending and tax incentives to rally North American semiconductor production. It was perhaps the most significant government-led mandate since the European Union ratified the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS).
And most are also aware of a similar, albeit smaller, bill to bolster domestic printed circuit board and IC substrate production that has been proposed in Congress but has yet to make it out of committee. (The latest version, called the Protecting Circuit Boards and Substrate Act, was introduced in late May.)
Far beyond the headlines, the team representing Jefferson Lab is working on an AI solution for the manufacturing side of the PCB industry. Which is how we came to find team members Dr. Thomas Britton and Dr. Nataliia Matsiuk walking the show floor at PCB East, talking with PCB manufacturers as part of a DoE academic program that aims to get scientists out of the labs to learn what problems the industry faces.
As Britton explains on a recent podcast we did, he and Matsiuk are technologists and problem-solvers out to provide tailored solutions applicable to the industry at large. What they need in return is for manufacturers to explain what their problems are.
“A lot of value is sitting above the manufacturing process,” Britton says, referring both to inaccessible collected data and missed opportunities to collect other useful data. “Can we make something adaptive and reactive utilizing that data coming from the manufacturing line?”
“There’s a lot of data being produced,” he elaborates. “It’s very complicated, lots of steps.” The DoE program seeks to take the data from those steps, aggregate it and use it to better assess the manufacturing process holistically, he says, getting in front of potential variances as opposed to, “ ‘Oh, what, there’s a problem here?’ ”
Clearly there is (or was) government momentum to support critical industries. While the Chips Act and Boards Bill are still trying to execute on their lofty goals, the DoE has been honing its craft for years.
The subtle gem of the DoE is it is already taxpayer funded. The crucial lever, then, isn't money – but communication.
“We’re doing things to help our science. And we’re funded from taxpayer dollars through the DoE to do the work we do,” he says.
One program, for instance, was for machine vision, which sought to replace shift workers with AI solutions.
“We’re looking at deep learning and those kinds of solutions,” says Britton. “One thing that I’ve heard of that’s a roadblock for a lot of factories, at least in the US, to develop this smart factory, is to be able to communicate with the AI systems. [Manufacturers] don’t have equipment that’s capable of reporting and communicating this [data].
“What we’ve found is Asia is very well-instrumented. Around [the US], legacy machinery maybe isn’t collecting the data. They didn’t know it would be valuable. We see PCB as a beachhead to prove out the technology because you have similar challenges, especially with substrate-like manufacturing techniques that are coming up.”
As part of their commercialization strategy, the DoE is considering an open AI model in which its researchers partner with a private manufacturer, and the improvements in the line outputs make up the proof of concept.
“I think it’s going to take a lot of partnerships between the lab, the researchers and industry partners to really dig into the data that is held so close to the chest for a variety of reasons.
“You take the knowledge you gain at one company and to go to the next one. And you are transferring that knowledge – just like an employee working at one firm and then moving to a different firm – without exposing the secrets of any party involved to enhance the manufacturing across the line,” Britton says.
“I think, right now, our top hypothesis is that you would do it through embedding with viable partners willing to give you the data, work with you, devote the time and then hopefully it would be made commercially available.”
Fabricators have often privately groused that the US government can be a roadblock to success. Will they take the opportunity to clear that path now that they know it’s available?
Mike Buetow is president of PCEA (pcea.net); This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
It’s not often you get the chance to talk shop with Hayao Nakahara, Gene Weiner, Tom Kastner and David Schild. When you do, you’re best off sitting back and listening.
That was the order of the day during the PCB East conference last month. Under the auspices of another media group, I was asked to moderate a panel on the future of PCB manufacturing in North America. And while journalists are often thought of as the seers of the industry, we are, in fact, more purveyors of others’ insights, versus prognosticators in our own right.
Since our founding, PCEA has sought to collaborate with other associations wherever we could.
We quickly formed alliances with peers in Australia, Germany, India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand and more. And our founders and leaders sit atop key technical committees in other organizations, such as IPC.
PCEA is the leading printed circuit design organization in the world, and in many instances these ties are intended to fill key technical gaps. We also see a mutual need to ensure our members have access to a wide range of manufacturing experts in every geography.
Read more: EIPC-PCEA Road Show Brings Experts to You
