HotPCB has pointed to and written about the relationship between fabricators and designers since our inception.  And we are not the only one speaking to it.  Pete Waddell of UP Media wrote an editorial to the issue of DFM (design for manufacture) failures within our industry earlier this year.  We would like to speak to the issue as well, but not without providing a way to begin fixing the problem.

The issue is that there has been, and will continue to be a disconnect between printed circuit board designers and fabricators.  If you, as a designer, have a firm grasp of the details surrounding the fabrication process, power to you and thank you.  However, if you are a designer and have not spent time learning the process of building boards, I highly recommend it.  Now I understand that the two parties have their areas of expertise, and I am not asking you to do a 9 month apprenticeship in a board shop.  But some research, and using some valuable tools available will be very beneficial to you.  How?  Read on.

Whenever a board comes into our shop, we need to check it for manufacturability and errors.  We use a variety of methods, but one of the key methods is to run the designs through DFM software.  We estimate that about 50% of the jobs we process need to go back to the designer for edits and changes after it has been run through the DFM.  That means we need to call/email the engineer, often leave a message, set up a time to talk about the issues, have them go fix the problems, wait to receive the updated files, assure that we don’t accidentally use the old files, re-check the design files, and then continue on in the production process.  In a quickturn shop, this may take 1-2 days, and I have heard several claim they often see it taking 5-7 days to get this all hashed out.  In a tense, quickturn market, several days means that you have doubled the lead time which was originally possible.  In addition to this, the fabricators are spending a lot of time going back and forth, chasing down engineers, revisions, files, etc.  This is time that is not billed, but in the long run finds its way into your boards because the process is less efficient and is using a lot of man-hours.  And so the designers are delayed in getting their boards, the fabricators are spending a lot of extra time pre-production, and nobody wins.

My hope is that there would be an industry wide shift in mentality toward an attitude of responsibility on the part of all to check for manufacturability.  I believe that it ultimately rests on designers to begin this change, and recognize that they can run preliminary DFM checks on their designs.  It takes very little time to run it, especially compared to several days of back and forth with the fabricator.  With designers running preliminary checks, and fabricators running secondary checks, the process will grow to be more seamless and productive.

One company in the marketplace who has narrowed in on this issue is Intercept Technology.  Their top-end software contains a DFM program, and their goal right now is to make it as accessible to designers as possible.  In fact, for a limited time it is free.  I recommend this to everyone within the industry.  This is an incredibly valuable tool for designers.  Together we can help each other accomplish our goals and increase in efficiency.  Designers will get their boards more quickly, fabricators will be able to spend more time improving their processes and building boards, and greater understanding/collaboration will be fostered between both.

Do you have a DFM nightmare story?  Or a success story?  Please feel free to comment below.  Maybe you think this is all hot air and unnecessary.  I’d like to hear what you have to say.

Valor products are the world’s leading software for printed circuit board (PCB) design for manufacturing (DFM) and manufacturing execution (MES) systems. Valor’s solutions target three key segments in the PCB manufacturing market: design of the physical layout of the PCB, fabrication of the bare PCB, and assembly of PCB components. With the acquisition of Valor, Mentor is now positioned as the only EDA supplier to provide the electronics industry with a PCB systems solution from concept through manufacturing.

“Valor’s expertise and products in the manufacturing segment are an excellent fit to Mentor’s in the PCB design area as together we provide a concept-through-manufacturing design solution to our customers,” stated Henry Potts, vice president and general manager of the Systems Design Division of Mentor Graphics. “This acquisition will reinforce our number one position in PCB design while enabling Valor to leverage the strengths of Mentor and accelerate their delivery of differentiated design for manufacturing and manufacturing execution products.”

By acquiring Valor, Mentor is the first major EDA vendor to extend its scope into the market for PCB systems manufacturing solutions. This will benefit the electronics industry by enabling electronics companies to finally eliminate the long-standing technical barriers and inefficiencies between the worlds of design and manufacturing. Mentor will be in a unique position to deliver an efficient, bi-directional engineering process between designers, their partners in systems manufacturing, and the product supply chain.
“This is a very exciting opportunity for all of us,” said Dan Hoz, former Valor CEO and now general manager of the newly-formed Valor division of Mentor Graphics. “With both companies occupying leading positions in their respective markets, our combined expertise can deliver a breakthrough in operational integration between the world of design and the supply-chain oriented world of manufacturing, for the benefit of the entire electronics industry. We foresee a promising future for Valor as a division of Mentor Graphics.”

The development of solutions for the manufacturing market will remain a core activity of the Valor division, reinforcing Valor’s and Mentor’s long-term commitment to deliver solutions and support to the manufacturing market, as well as powerful integration of design for manufacturing functionality into Mentor and non-Mentor PCB design environments. For more information regarding the acquisition and the go-forward strategy, visit www.mentor.com/valor.

About Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services and award-winning support for the world’s most successful electronics and semiconductor companies. Established in 1981, the company reported revenues over the last 12 months of about $800 million and employs approximately 4,425 people worldwide. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777. World Wide Web site: http://www.mentor.com/.

(Mentor Graphics is a registered trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners.)

Altium Goes for the Masses
Breaking the EDA Mold… Again

by Kevin Morris, FPGA and Structured ASIC Journal

This week, Altium is introducing a new model for the purchase of electronic design tools, in an attempt to create a grass-roots revolution that will change the nature of the electronic design automation (EDA) market.  For the past several years, Altium has been marching to a different drummer – focusing on an integrated desktop design tool suite that spans the gamut of electronic design from system-level specification to board and package layout and verification to FPGA design and to embedded software development and debug.  We characterize this approach as the “Microsoft Office” of EDA – bundling together key capabilities that most design teams require and integrating them into one simple solution.

Now, Altium is doing the same thing with their pricing models, swerving very close to the “software as a service” concept by offering seats of their design suite for a very affordable monthly fee.  In addition, they’re reducing the prices on their perpetual licenses and on their development boards.  The result is that just about anyone who can afford to spend time doing electronic design can also afford a highly capable, comprehensive tool suite.  The price – comparable to what a professional graphic designer would pay for a high-end software suite from Adobe – is a mold-breaker for EDA and on a level playing field with what FPGA companies charge for their vendor-specific tool suites.  Altium is not competing with FPGA vendor tools, however.  Instead, they surround and complement them with a wide range of system- and board-level capabilities that extend far beyond FPGA pins.

Those familiar with the EDA industry may feel that Altium has gone too far, and that the price reductions will serve only to erode revenues in a market that is historically price-inelastic.  These experts are most likely wrong – because they’re familiar with the EDA industry.

The EDA industry began, about three decades ago, taking advantage of economy of scale in what was then the center of the electronic design market – ASIC design.  In those days, ASIC was the up-and-coming, well-funded middle.  The high-flying, cutting-edge, big-budget work was all full-custom IC design – practiced by big-company engineers who wore pocket protectors with their parachute pants (it was the early 80s, after all).  These companies often had their own semiconductor fabs and paid premium prices for Calma stations and other tools of the trade of the times.  The low-budget, lower-tech operations had to make do assembling their designs out of standard parts on custom boards.

ASIC, however, brought down the barrier to entry into custom chip design.  Now, smart design teams with modest resources could create custom chips that dramatically improved their competitiveness.  If you could add an ASIC to your design, reduced costs, improved integration, better performance, and smaller form-factors were all yours.  A plethora of ASIC companies emerged to capitalize on this new market, and the EDA industry soon emerged – producing ASIC design tools that enabled middle-of-the-road design teams to take advantage of the ASIC revolution.

Over time, however, ASIC design slowly moved from the middle of the market to the upper edge.  With each process generation, ASIC design became more complex and expensive, and the demands on design tools became more extreme.  EDA companies followed these customers into the stratosphere, producing more and more sophisticated ASIC design tools for their more and more demanding designers.  As this progressed, however, the field of design teams narrowed.  More expensive non-recurring engineering (NRE) and mask costs, more expensive and complex tools, and a more sophisticated design process whittled down the number of design teams that could do ASIC design competitively.

Today, only the most sophisticated, best-funded engineering teams attempt ASIC design.  Only the highest-volume, most-demanding design projects can justify the cost and risk of an ASIC design start. Technologies like FPGA and ASSP have moved in and taken over the vast majority (estimates are more than 95%) of electronic design starts from ASIC.

The EDA industry, however, has not followed along, for the most part.  EDA has thrived and/or survived over the years because their pricing could be relatively inelastic.  If a design tool could help you avoid a costly ASIC re-spin, a six-figure price tag was almost irrelevant.  Following on that fact, EDA became an industry of big-ticket software, big customers, and huge deals.  It grew an expensive, high-touch, direct sales channel whose primary activities were golfing, wining, and dining in order to maintain relationships with corporate-deal executives so their software catalog would be on top of the pile when it came time to negotiate and re-allocate the next two- or three-year multi-million dollar “remix” all-the-software-you-can-use contract.  With these sales channels established, EDA cruised along following the money.  Bigger investments went into more complex, more sophisticated tools.  The prices increased.  The size of the ASIC-designing customer base decreased.

Most of the electronic designers on Earth, however, couldn’t afford the big-ticket EDA tools even if they needed them.  Small- and mid-sized companies doing everything except ASIC design are generally forced into the cheap seats by the EDA industry.  Sure, you still pay nine dollars for a beer and seventeen-fifty for a souvenir photo program, but you’re watching the game from behind a post, high-up in left field (on the sun side), while the ASIC teams enjoy free cocktails and hors d’oeuvres in the air-conditioned box-suite.

Altium’s new pricing model aims to serve the vast majority of design teams who aren’t at the top of mainstream EDA’s party invite list.  This should have a particularly big impact in emerging engineering countries like India and China, and it could enable more robust competition from startups and mid-sized companies worldwide.  “Engineers are smart people,” says Altium CEO and founder Nick Martin.  “They will catch on to the fundamental changes occurring in electronic product design, and they will drive those changes within their organizations.”  Martin points out that today, product success is often predicated on an entire ecosystem consisting not only of hardware, but also software, services, and communication between those elements.  Driving that change requires coordination among engineers in a wide range of disciplines, and an integrated, affordable tool suite could be pivotal in realizing that vision.

by Kevin Morris, FPGA and Structured ASIC Journal

April 21, 2009