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2004 the rebound year for Vision Circuits

By Leo Valiquette, Ottawa Business Journal Staff
Oct 7, 2004

Cautious optimism and a growing outsourcing trend is paying off in spades for a local circuit board designer, with contracts having almost tripled in the first nine months of this year.

Vision Circuits, which calls itself Canada's largest dedicated printed circuit board layout service firm, said Thursday its contract orders are up 188 per cent in the first nine months of this year. The number of customers is up 21 per cent. According to Allen Crawford, director of marketing and sales, Vision is on track to post its first annual profit since the tech slump. As a privately held company, Vision won't offer up specific figures from its balance sheet, but Mr. Crawford added that "revenue wise, we're about 80 per cent of where we were at the peak" of the tech boom. The 10-year-old company employs 14 staff, still a few short of where the company was in 2001.

"I think what we're seeing is some cautious but forward movement with companies developing new products," he said. "They're either taking their existing products and creating the next generation of product or they're enhancing the existing product by adding small features so we get what are called 'respins'." However, the company has yet to see the scale and scope of orders return to the heyday of the tech boom when business was brisk for new product designs.

Vision Circuits doesn't limit itself to dealing with a specific industry and that is also paying off. Demand for its services is coming from a broader range of industries beyond telecom as more and more companies decide to outsource and focus in-house on their core competencies.

A big driver is now the security industry for surveillance technology, as well as the semiconductor industry. The company is also in talks to secure its first significant orders from the bio-tech field. "I think there's a slow wave building," Mr. Crawford added. "Certainly people who have lived through the bubble aren't going to do things to recreate that ... everybody's very cautious in the kinds of adjectives that they use. They want to be optimistic but they don't want to be blinded by the light again."

Soft touch connectorless probing technology

AGILENT Technologies has announced that its Pro Series soft touch connectorless logic analyser probe interface has been adopted by logic analyser vendors as the industry standard.

Adopted as the industry standard.
7 October 2004
The standard interface, based on Agilent's soft touch connectorless probing technology, is an array of probe pads arranged in a common footprint that can be probed by equipment from multiple vendors.Now engineers in the computer, semiconductor and communications industries can benefit from connectorless probing without having to choose between competing connectorless probe interfaces.

The new Agilent Pro Series soft touch connectorless logic analyser probes offer a 30 percent smaller footprint than its original soft touch probes.The Pro Series probes use the same proprietary micro spring-pin technology as previous models to provide the industry's most reliable performance.Agilent's micro spring-pin technology features a four-point crown tip that can pierce any contamination on the board and provide redundant contact to maximize reliability.

The new, easy-to-use top-mount retention module accommodates varying printed circuit board thicknesses.These probes are the only connectorless logic analyser probes compatible with lead-free finishes such as organic-coated copper that support the electronic industry's migration to lead-free products, as well as other frequently used finishes including gold, silver and hot-air surface level.Agilent's soft touch probes enable a direct connection from the probe to targets on a printed circuit board without the use of a connector.

This reduces capacitive loading and minimizes the effect of the probe on system performance, an important consideration for engineers developing products using today's high-speed technologies such as double data rate (DDR) and PCI Express.Eliminating the need to place a connector on the target, regardless of the speed of the signals being measured, simplifies the validation of designs that are tight on space or that require minimal disruption of signal routing.

Agilent’s connectorless probing supports its entire line of logic analysers. The E5404A soft touch probe measures single-ended data and clocks, and can be used with any Agilent logic analyser with a 40-pin cable connector.The E5405A probe supports differential data and clocks, and the E5406A supports single-ended data and differential clocks. Both probes can be used with any Agilent logic analyser with a 90-pin cable connector.

Advanced Circuits Named One of Colorado's Fastest-Growing Technology Companies for the Sixth Consecutive Year

October 05, 2004 Denver - AURORA - Advanced Circuits, the only quick-turn printed circuit board manufacturer with easy, real-time customer service, has been named to Deloitte & Touche's prestigious Technology Fast 50 Program for the sixth consecutive year. Advanced Circuits is one of only four elite companies in Colorado to receive this recognition for five years or more.

Deloitte & Touche LLP, one of the nation's leading professional services, ranked the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in the Colorado area based on the percentage of growth in fiscal year revenues over five years, from 1998-2003.

"Although the last three years have been challenging for this industry we have continued to experience phenomenal growth," said Huston. "This continued success has been a result of our commitment to producing high quality, quick turn PCBs and our focus on developing excellent relationships with our customers."

Advanced Circuits' increase in revenues from 1998 to 2003 resulted in a 25th overall ranking in the Fast 50 for Colorado. The average increase in revenues among companies who made the Fast 50 for this region was 708 percent.

To qualify for the Technology Fast 50, companies must have had operating revenues of at least $50,000 in 1998 and $1,000,000 in 2003; must be public or private companies headquartered in North America; and be a "technology company," defined as owning proprietary technology that contributes to a significant portion of the company's operating revenues (using other companies' technology in a unique way does not qualify), and/or devoting a significant proportion of revenues to research and development of technology.

Winners of the 20 regional Technology Fast 50 programs in the United States and Canada are automatically entered in the Deloitte & Touche Technology Fast 500 program, which ranks North America's top 500 fastest-growing technology companies. For more information on the Deloitte & Touche Fast 50 or Fast 500 programs, visit www.fast500.com.

About Advanced Circuits

Since 1989, Advanced Circuits has been a quick-turn printed circuit board manufacturer that specializes in producing quick-turn PCBs. Unlike other quick-turn printed circuit board companies, Advanced Circuits combines real-time online service with personalized customer care. Customers can talk to a live representative, or go online to get quotes, place orders and check status 24 hours a day. In addition, the company offers free design for manufacturability checks, obtaining results within minutes, at www.FreeDFM.com. With no minimum quantity requirement, Advanced Circuits offers same-day delivery with standard delivery of three days. For more information, visit http://www.4pcb.com, or call 800-979-4PCB.

About Deloitte & Touche

Deloitte & Touche, one of the nation's leading professional services firms, provides assurance and advisory, tax, and management consulting services through nearly 30,000 people in more than 80 U.S. cities. The firm is dedicated to helping its clients and its people excel. Known as an employer of choice for innovative human resources programs, Deloitte & Touche has been recognized as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For in America" by Fortune magazine for six consecutive years. Deloitte & Touche refers to Deloitte & Touche LLP and related entities. Deloitte & Touche is the U.S. national practice of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a Swiss Verein, and each of its national practices is a separate and independent legal entity. For more information, please visit Deloitte & Touche's web site at www.deloitte.com/us.

Cadence Incisive Conformal Technology Becomes Standardized Solution for Fujitsu Worldwide

Deployment Helps Fujitsu Speed Time-to-Market and Maximize First Silicon Success of Highly Complex Chips for Multimedia, Consumer and Communications Applications

San Jose, California , September 7, 2004
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE: CDN; Nasdaq: CDN) today announced that Fujitsu Limited has standardized worldwide on the Cadence® Incisive™ Conformal® equivalence checking solution for verifying the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) requirements of its highly complex, multi-million-gate system-on-chip designs.

"Fujitsu's leading-edge chip and system technology has resulted in some of the most advanced designs available for digital audio-visual and communications applications," said Kazuyuki Kawauchi, General Manager, Design Methodology Development Division, LSI Group, Fujitsu Limited. "We've utilized the Conformal technology for four years and have tested it extensively for all our ASIC flows. Incisive Conformal is our equivalence checking solution of choice because of its superior performance, capacity and the ease with which the tool could be deployed to our design teams. Our design teams can reap the benefits of efficient and comprehensive verification from RTL to netlist, helping speed time-to-market and maximizing first-pass silicon success."

Incisive Conformal technology checks the functional equivalence of different versions of a design at various critical stages and enables the designer to identify and correct errors as soon as they are introduced. The result is faster, more accurate bug detection and correction throughout the entire design flow. By providing complete verification coverage, re-spin risk is minimized.

"Incisive Conformal equivalence checking is one of the best complete solutions available that meets our RTL flow requirement," Kazuyuki Kawauchi continued. "Approximately 400 Incisive Conformal licenses are being used by Fujitsu engineers in our design and verification flows, and its unique abilities to verify complex optimizations have resulted in many successful tape-outs."

"The feedback from working closely with our customers, such as Fujitsu, enables us to find new ways to enhance our technology to help compress the verification cycle and ease the burden presented by the verification bottleneck," said Michael Chang, vice president of R&D, Incisive Formal Verification division, Cadence. "Collaboration with customers like Fujitsu helps ensure that we meet the requirements of their next-generation designs, as well as the needs of their customers across the silicon design chain."

With success in thousands of tape-outs, Incisive Conformal technology is the most widely supported equivalence checking solution in the industry, and can verify a wide variety of circuits, including complex arithmetic logic, datapath, memories, and custom logic. The technology also provides extended functional checks that are complementary to equivalence checking. These types of checks include clock domain crossing and structural and semantic checks to help designers find difficult implementation bugs not previously verified by traditional equivalence checking.

Major productivity enhancements to Zuken’s desktop PCB design suite CADSTAR include faster and more accurate automated routing

Placement orientation now accurate to 1/1000th degree

September 7th, 2004– Bristol, UK - Zuken announces CADSTAR 7.0, a major revision to its scalable, front-to-back desktop PCB design suite. Enhancements include increased routing precision for high-density and miniaturized boards, improved place-and-route automation, definition of lengthening track patterns constraints through a graphical user interface, and a new search tool for finding components and other design items faster. A tool for simulation and verification, CADSTAR SI Verify eliminates unnecessary design iterations and is available as an option with the CADSTAR 7.0 solution.

Using the upgraded tool suite, placement can now be done with 1/1000 th degree precision, enabling even the most densely populated boards to be accurately placed and tight design constraints to be set. This feature is also important for designers of integrated circuit test boards, as test probing points need to be meticulously defined.

The place-and-route editor within the tool suite has additional customization and scripting options to improve user productivity. Custom menus can be created, keyboards can be re-mapped to match the requirements of individual users or host systems, and comprehensive scripting references have been added. New routing wizards guide users, via a graphical user interface, through step-by-step automated routing routines for complete boards. Copper pour can now be configured to automatically re-pour whenever there are changes. This enables the user to route through copper area, and the copper will be re-poured to prevent errors.

Where track lengths need to be adjusted to achieve timing goals, a lengthening wizard has been introduced that allows users to choose their preferred track pattern, via a pull-down menu, for lengthening individual tracks or differential pairs. Another improvement is the ability to define constraints within component footprints. If the component is moved, the constrained footprint area automatically moves with it. Also, the search tool is now faster and easier to use when locating components or other design elements.

Higher performance routers in the P.R.Editor XR 2000 and 5000 families can also be specified as add-on options with CADSTAR 7.0. Amongst other enhancements, constraints can be defined in terms of both length and delay. In addition, the high-speed versions of the routers enable skew constraints to be set, making it easier to route buses while ensuring that all nets are routed within defined tolerances, preventing timing problems and improving signal integrity control.

The CADSTAR SI Verify module provides post-layout simulation and verification. Operating at up to Gigabit speeds, the tool uses a transmission line simulation approach to analyze reflection and crosstalk effects and also facilitates real interconnect timing and delay analysis. It incorporates a graphical scenario editor, layer stack definition for optimization of impedances and layers, an EMC device library, and the option to perform interactive simulation or batch simulation. Using CADSTAR SI Verify cuts design iterations, particularly in high-speed and densely populated designs where design ‘rules-of-thumb’ are no longer accurate enough.

CADSTAR 7 is available now, and costs from € 3,650 / $3,495.

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