Design News

HERNDON, VA – iNEMI sponsored two forums in late 2008, both of which outlined industry action to address current and future environmental challenges and, in response to this input, iNEMI has identified new collaborative efforts. 
 
Proposals for four iNEMI projects emerged from discussions at the Sustainability Summit: noncompetitive lifecycle assessments for information and communication technology products based on a building block approach using assembly emulators; PVC replacement alternatives, using LCAs to compare PVC vs. PVC-free cables and technical evaluation of alternatives; establishing a market for post-consumer plastics as feedstock for green products (e.g., polycarbonate, ABS — acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene), and establishing electronics applications for post-consumer blended plastics (e.g., housings for power supplies).
 
Two of these initiates are currently in development, says the consortium. Tom Okrasinski, Alcatel-Lucent, and Todd Myers, Cisco, will champion the Eco-Impact Evaluator for ICT Equipment Initiative (noncompetitive LCAs); and Scott O’Connell, Dell, is championing the PVC alternatives effort.
 
To become involved in either project, contact Jim Arnold, iNEMI consultant, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
 
Other areas identified for industry action include working with an IPC standards committee to create a practical industry definition of “halogen-free”; creating an HFR- and PVC-free component and board test specification and metrology, and through traditional volume learning curves, achieving HFR- and PVC-free materials cost, delivery and quality parity. 
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Altium has added the CADstar file importer to the latest release of Altium Designer that already supports legacy design files from Allegro, OrCAD, DX Designer, PADS and P-CAD and Protel design tools. 
 
The file importer will allow designers to move from older-style, legacy point tools to Altium’s next generation solution. Users will be able to unlock the potential of large-scale programmable devices while still creating custom-designed PCBs using Altium’s board design features. 
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – Altium will return as a sponsor of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), an annual competition among young robot designers. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen to increase youth interest and participation in science and technology.
 
Each of the high-school teams will use the Altium Designer electronics design solution to develop custom circuits and modules for the robots. After the competition, the teams will have access to Altium Designer for one year.
 
This year, teams will also be able to download design files for the system, as well as study and modify them. Under a Creative Commons open source license, designs for the power distribution panel, digital side car, analog and solenoid breakout and several sensor carrier boards have been released. Teams using these designs for their custom hardware must publish the modified designs, creating a community of open hardware. The FRC Championship will take place April 16-18 in Atlanta, GA with over $9 million in scholarships up for grabs.
 
“With its generous contribution to the FIRST Robotics Competition at our highest Crown Supplier level, Altium makes it possible for us to turn the FIRST vision of inspiring young people’s interest and participation in science and technology into a reality,” says Paul Gudonis, FIRST president.
 
YAVNE, ISRAEL – Valor Computerized Systems has obtained the assets of PCB Matrix Corp. The acquisition expands Valor’s product portfolio of PCB design solutions; PCB Matrix customers will be able to access Valor’s global support services. 

PCB Matrix was a partner with IPC in the development of IPC-7351 Land Pattern standards, and the LP Wizard land pattern generation software was awarded the DesignVision Award at DesignCon 2007.

“We believe the industry will benefit from a streamlined library creation process that has the potential to incorporate manufacturing knowledge into the EDA libraries. This will ultimately lead to more manufacturable designs the first time through,” said Patrick McGoff, vice president of design market at Valor.
PISCATAWAY, NJ – Mentor Graphics recently received the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA) 2008 Corporate Award. The honor acknowledges Mentor’s “visionary leadership in bringing greater efficiency to the standards development process in the Design Automation Standards Committee through the adoption and support of the entity based development model.”
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MARLBOROUGH, MA – DownStream Technologies LLC announced that it has begun shipping CAM350 Release 10 and BluePrint-PCB Release 2. In addition, the company is offering the two products for download. After extensive development, integration between the products is complete, providing a synergistic solution for PCB post-processing.
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