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The weather couldn’t have been better for PCB West, and PCB designers and manufacturers packed the show floor for much of the exhibition on Wednesday, Sept. 20 in Santa Clara, California. The show floor was sold out, and it was great seeing old friends and meeting new ones.
If there was one unifying topic for this show, it would have to be the advent of artificial intelligence in EDA tools. Some PCB designers are apprehensive about AI, fearing that it will take away their jobs. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, according to PCB007 Editor Nolan Johnson, who attended the Wednesday afternoon panel, “AI in Electronics: What Can We Expect?”
Nolan shared the following observations from panelist Sebastian Schaal of Luminous: “AI in PCB today is at a level similar to assembly language for software developers. Higher-level programming tools did not take away jobs; they just made us much more effective.”
On Tuesday, Zuken announced AIPR for its CR-8000 PCB design tools. Kyle Miller, PhD, the scientist behind the development of the tool’s AI, also took part in the AI panel. Right now, Zuken’s AI will only work with CR-8000, but Kyle expects their tool to be able to read in IPC-2581 data soon.
PCB West was a definite success. Let’s hope this marks a harbinger for the rest of the trade show season.
