The Thrill of Victory: IPC Design Competition

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The final heat of the 2024 IPC Design Competition took place on Tuesday, April 9, during IPC APEX EXPO. IPC’s Kris Moyer and Patrick Crawford served as judges and onsite supervisors for the event, which featured five competitors—four online and one live at IPC APEX EXPO. The grand prize winner was Dinesh G., followed by Paul Brionez in second place (he placed third last year), Ajeesh Francis in third, and runners-up Joseph Chiu and Harish G (last year’s champion).

I met with Kris and Patrick during the final heat of the design competition and asked them to walk me through what was happening, what they look for as judges, and how the event has evolved since its inception in 2022. 

Michelle Te: Kris, tell me about the design competition that’s taking place today. What are the contestants doing right now?

Kris Moyer: Today is the final heat of the IPC Design Competition. We have a total of five competitors here: two finalists from IPC India's design competition, as well as the three finalists from IPC USA's preliminaries, which began in January.

This year, we gave them a fully finished schematic design, which in this case is like one of those dancing light boxes that dances to the music of your voice. It has a microphone amplifier, a microphone input stage, an amplifier stage, and a bunch of LEDs and clock driver stages. I have a similar string of LED lights around my place that can change with the music and dance and give me some mood lighting or change colors if I want.

This is something that you could put in a lightbox on your wall, and you would see changes in the color LEDs as they change with the music. This year, we did something unique: We decided to make it our IPC logo in the shape of the board, so you can see all the cutouts.

So, rather than one solid, rectangular board shape, we actually have the logo and the various parts of our letters all cut out. That makes it a very challenging shape to work with. It’s difficult for the contestants to get all the parts physically placed and complete all the routing. There are many narrow channels, and a very thin gap to get a signal from point A to point B. Also, being a somewhat rounded shape means we can't use the standard placement—placing components in a nice, rectangular grid. They have to use different rotation angles.

Te: What’s the judging process?

Moyer: As soon as they're done, they will submit their projects to Patrick. Once we have all five projects, Patrick, me, and the other judges will all meet in the same room, and we'll just go through our rubric right there on the spot. We should know by the end of the day today who the winner is, and then on Thursday, we’ll make the announcement.

Te: What do they get for winning in addition to bragging rights?

Patrick Crawford: There is a cash prize associated with winning. Design007 Magazine usually has coverage of the winners, and every contestant gets a shout-out. The IPC Design Competition is a great way to get your name out in front of the industry.

Te: They get their name in lights, and it’s always good to have your name known in the industry.

Crawford: Sure, it’s definitely a résumé-enhancer, especially if you’re one of the winners.

To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the 2024 issue of Show & Tell Magazine, click here.