Printed Circuit Design & Fab Online Magazine - Current

Products

GARBSEN, Germany – The LPKF ProtoLaser 100 is said to combine the capabilities of an advanced milling and drilling circuit board plotter with a sophisticated laser system.

The ProtoLaser 100 is reportedly ideal system for the laser structuring, milling and drilling of circuit carriers. A special laser system removes the copper layer between the conductive strips without affecting the substrate. Printed circuit board prototypes with 50 µm (2 mil) structures can be manufactured quickly and flexibly.

Completely integrated LPKF software automatically manages all tool parameters, as well as the interaction between laser and mechanical machining. With its operating speed and precision, the LPKF ProtoLaser 100 is said to produce excellent results on varied materials like FR4, FR3, G10, PTFE-based substrates, ceramics or Duroid.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – Synopsys Inc. has added extensions to its Liberty library format that will reportedly allow engineers to control design margins, improve design robustness and increase parametric yield.

According to the company, the new extensions are meant to allow a high level of accuracy and are built on the Composite Current Source (CCS) models that aim to unify timing, signal integrity and power.

Process variation models allow variation-aware design and emerging applications such as statistical static timing analysis, which account for uncertainties due to variability in device and interconnect at sub-65nm technology nodes.

The Liberty library extensions are a key part of the company’s strategy to address the emerging DFM challenges at sub-65nm by allowing variation-aware design and furthering openness and interoperability in the industry.

WILSONVILLE, OR — Mentor Graphics Corp. has released the first Mentor processor support package for the ARM Cortex-M3 processor, which works with the company’s Seamless tool to expose hardware/software integration errors inherent in processor-based designs.

Read more: Mentor Offers Support Package for ARM Cortex-M3

ROGERS, CT -- Rogers Corp. is introducing its RO4230high frequency circuit material. The RO4230 circuit material is said to extend the capabilities of the RO4000 product series used for antenna applications. The RO4230 is a ceramic filled, glass reinforced hydrocarbon based material that reportedly provides controlled dielectric constant, low loss performance and excellent passive intermodulation (PIM) response for mobile infrastructure microstrip antenna uses.

The material is halogen free and meets the worldwide green standards. It processes similarly to FR-4 laminates in plated through-hole preparation. Typical applications include infrastructure base station antennas, satellite radio antennas and WiMAX base station antennas.

Reported features include:

- Excellent PIM response
- Higher thermal conductivity for high power applications
- Non-PTFE
- Excellent high frequency performance due to low dielectric tolerance and loss
- Low thermal coefficient of dielectric constant
- Low in-plane expansion coefficient

IRVINE, CA – Henkel Electronics has introduced the Accelerated Cooling (AC) process to be used in conjunction with Hysol FP5000 and Hysol FP5001, the company’s two flip-chip in package non-conductive paste (NCP) underfill encapsulants.

The patent-pending AC flip-chip assembly process heats the device while it is secured by the flip-chip bonder head and then is cooled during compression onto the NCP-coated substrate. This rapid cooling process enables assembly completion prior to any excess heat exposure, reducing package warpage and voids caused by moisture and assembly cycle time.

The AC process is reported to cut the typical cycle time by nearly 50%, delivering a 7 second cycle time.

PALO ALTO, CA – Hewlett-Packard (HP) has introduced a low-cost workstation for the entry-level market. Featuring the new Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processor and 975X Express chipset, the HP xw4400 Workstation is said to be ideal for meeting the computing demands of engineers, designers, video editors and other power users.

“Our customers have an insatiable demand for performance – the xw4400 offers a performance breakthrough over previous system architectures,” said Jim Zafarana, vice president and worldwide marketing manager, Workstation Global Business Unit, HP. “The xw4400 boasts dual graphics capabilities, an internal USB port for secure software licensing and leading acoustic levels, all with less power required at the plug.”

The HP xw4400 Workstation is designed to deliver the performance and flexibility needed by mechanical computer-aided design engineers, architectural engineers, architects and other users in small and medium-size businesses, enterprises and original equipment manufacturers.

It comes with Microsoft Windows 32-bit or x64 and has a wide range of graphics, memory and storage options, including serial-attached SCSI hard drives. The workstation also will be Windows Vista Capable at launch and will offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux later this fall.

The xw4400 is designed to facilitate print and electronic design, 2D animation, web authoring, video editing and corporate content creation.