Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Current Issue

Material Gains

Alun Morgan

Changes in standards and supply chain are making high-performance materials more accessible.

5G is expected to revolutionize many aspects of work and life, as a critical enabler for connected cars and self-driving vehicles, autonomous factories, remote medical surgery and the diffusion of smart “things” throughout cities, infrastructures and our homes.

Within the automotive sector alone, its influence will be huge thanks to attributes like ultra-low latency that will enable time-critical use cases such as V2X. The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) is excited about the prospects for cellular V2X (C-V2X) to consolidate vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to-pedestrian, and vehicle-to-network modes, combining direct communication, communication with cell towers, and links to cloud services.

For a country to delay 5G rollout risks compromising standards of living and economic competitiveness. On the other hand, US concerns about foreign involvement in such a pervasive infrastructure are widely reported. While the UK has decided to grant Huawei access to noncritical parts of the network – against the counsel of the Trump administration – it has been proposed the US consider the outright purchase of equipment companies such as Nokia as a way of keeping pace while also staying in control.

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Alun Morgan

If you want to know where tech is going, watch the kids.

Video game sales were valued at $79 billion in 2017, larger than the global PCB market and growing at about 14% per annum. As far as gaming hardware is concerned, combined sales of pure game consoles and high-performing PC graphics cards for gaming generate about $50 billion each year.

Short product lifetimes mean gaming hardware is a constant revenue driver. In addition, gamers’ demands for more lifelike experiences have driven rapid technological change, including the development of dedicated high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), which first emerged in the late 1990s.

The GPU was initially conceived to boost 3-D graphics performance, taking on specific workloads such as triangle calculation. As GPU capabilities have increased, game designers have increased the complexity of their scenes to ensure ever-greater realism. Ultimately, of course, the benefits of this “arms race” have transcended the gaming community: GPUs are now found to be remarkably adept at taking on performance-hungry workloads such as AI acceleration and blockchain mining, tasks that much of today’s world depends on but that could barely have been on researchers’ radars when the first GPU chips hit the market.

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Alun Morgan

Between counterfeits and improper handling, the potential for consequences is rampant.

I’m a huge fan of the connected world. I’ve commented previously on the many potential benefits for communities everywhere. Like many good things, however, it poses its own set of challenges. One of these is the “democratization” of cyber-crime. The spread of the IoT means we are all vulnerable in our connected homes, our connected cars, or when enjoying the efficiencies of connected infrastructures and smart services. The potential consequences of cyber-attacks are no longer an issue only for banks, governments or large corporations. The consequences of a hacked car or medical device can be personal, real-time, and in some instances life-threatening.

IoT software protocols and hardware-device security down to the silicon level are being developed to counter a host of potential attacks that can range from stealing stored passwords or intellectual property to taking over devices and systems using malicious firmware. This will be an ongoing battle of “arms versus armor.” Other potential security threats such as counterfeiting are more mature, less fast-paced, but costly and potentially dangerous. Counterfeit electronic components are reckoned to cost the industry billions of dollars every year, although the Semiconductor Industry Association points out that the safety implications and potential threat to life posed by rogue components often worth only a few cents each make this a far more serious issue than financially larger black markets such as those for counterfeit high-value luxury goods.

Read more: Materials Supply Chain Security

Alun Morgan

If Southeast Asia has the lowest labor rates, why do they also have the best automation?

Compared to highly visible “mass” markets such as automotive electronics and smartphones, it’s easy to think of the market for industrial electronics as “niche.” However, in total, about 23% of PCBs produced worldwide are used in electronics equipment for manufacturing applications. If we include categories that are obviously non-consumer, such as telecom equipment, data-center computing, and solar/wind-power conversion, storage, and smart-grid control within our concept of industrial electronics, it’s clear this sector is extremely important to the world’s electronics producers.

As far as technology for manufacturing is concerned, we see organizations introducing digital transformation are profoundly changing the way they go about making, marketing, and supporting their products. Within this, smart manufacturing (aka Industry 4.0) leveraging cyber-physical systems, connected through the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), seamless linking of operational technology (OT) and IT infrastructures, intensive robotic process automation, and infusion of AI into edge devices and cloud services, is enabling companies to increase efficiency and agility, and improve standards of service delivery to customers.

Read more: Smart Manufacturing Technology Calls for Smart Investment