Bits&Chips 5 | 23 October 2020 | RF

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Bringing motion systems to a whole new stage

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EFFECT PHOTONICS LIGHTS UP OPTICAL-TRANSCEIVER MARKET

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pinion EDITORIAL Paul van Gerven is an editor at Bits&Chips.

Nvidia-Arm deal will never happen

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hile many investors and analysts applaud Nvidia’s ballsy move to purchase Arm, one of the chip design company’s co-founders most definitely does not.

“The sale of Arm to Nvidia will destroy the very basis of Arm’s business model, which is to be the Switzerland of the semiconductor industry, dealing in an even-handed way with its over 500 licensees. Most of them are Nvidia’s competitors,” writes Hermann Hauser in an open letter to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In a press conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Arm CEO Simon Segars took great pains to assure that Arm’s business model would remain intact, continuing the open-licensing model and maintaining customer neutrality. Hauser dismisses these promises outright. “The value of that is not worth the value of the piece of paper it’s written on, unless it’s legally binding,” he told Sky News. “Of course, Nvidia will say this at the moment, but I think there’s absolutely no reason to believe that they’ll keep that promise long-term.”

Hauser makes a good point. By buying Arm, Nvidia is obviously looking to gain some kind of strategic advantage. Otherwise, it might just as well license Arm’s IP like anyone else. For Nvidia, the overarching goal is “to create the premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence.” That may make a lot of sense business-wise, but the deal stretches out to many other application areas as well, such as automotive, IoT and possibly data centers. Nvidia gaining such a strong level of influence on that many corners of the market will, understandably, be a major source of

concern for a large chunk of the semiconductor industry.

The competition will be worrying about whether Arm will grant its new parent early access to new designs or making them work better with Nvidia products. Or if simply not having to license and pay for IP will give Nvidia an unfair competitive advantage. Competitors won’t be too excited about the prospect of

That’s just weird – like TSMC designing its own smartphone chips

comm’s purchase of NXP couldn’t get Beijing’s approval, and that deal had much fewer ramifications.

The UK, too, may be hesitant to risk damaging the crown jewel of its tech industry, as Hauser fears. In 2016, Arm’s acquisition by Softbank was hailed by the government as a vote of confidence in a post-Brexit Britain, but nowadays, the Brits no longer “seem perfectly happy to stand aside while their best and brightest businesses are picked off at will,” comments The Telegraph.

The Nvidia-Arm deal would reshape the semiconductor industry’s competitive landscape for the worse and touches some very raw geopolitical nerves. That is why it will never happen.

‘subsidizing’ Nvidia with royalty payments anyway. And in times of escalating US-Chinese trade tensions, the last thing China wants is for a key semiconductor player to be put under the control of a US company (although Arm was already abiding

by US trade restrictions).

The bottom line is that Arm will be owned by a company that sells chips.

That’s just... weird – like TSMC designing its own smartphone chips.

Unless some very unusual safeguards are put in place, many Arm licensees will be very unhappy.

This is why Arm’s acquisition will face a lot of pushback from the industry, and, by extension, scrutiny from regulators. Already a Chinese state-backed newspaper described the deal as “disturbing” and urged authorities to exercise caution in approving it. Recall that Qual-

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CONTENTS IN THIS ISSUE OF BITS&CHIPS

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16

News

Background

Effect Photonics’ optical transceivers tune in to the market

Bringing high-performance motion systems to a whole new stage

It’s been quite the journey, but Effect Photonics is finally ready to take the telecom market by storm.

Key players in Dutch high tech are teaming up to create next-generation high-performance motion systems.

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Nvidia-Arm deal will never happen

18

You should learn how to present

News

7 Noise 8 Effect Photonics’ optical transceivers tune in to the market 37 Built-in plumbing cools chips much more efficiently

Opinion 3 13 15 25 39

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Nvidia-Arm deal will never happen – Paul van Gerven Turning the knobs – Bram Nauta Back in school – Joachim Burghartz The headhunter – Anton van Rossum Government-directed innovation is not the answer – Maarten Buijs

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27

The art of designing and building RF power amplifier applications

Background 16 35 42 44

Bringing high-performance motion systems to a whole new stage How to design a high-speed PCB From manufacturing data to continuous process improvement The Agile coach as a counselor – what we can learn from Star Trek

Interview

18 You should learn how to present 20 Understanding how to generate value – within time and budget 32 Training is key to superior chip knowledge at NXP

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Understanding how to generate value – within time and budget As a project manager, system architect and crisis manager, Luud Engels has a reputation for not mincing words.

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The Agile coach as a counselor – what we can learn from Star Trek

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NOISE

Software

Consumer electronics

if(!boundCopy) { printf(“No PhD for you”); } Dennis Ritchie, creator of C and co-creator of Unix, never obtained a PhD. In itself, that’s not particularly remarkable. History is littered with geniuses who didn’t get around to writing a dissertation. The thing is: Ritchie did write a dissertation. It even was approved by a thesis committee at Harvard University. All he needed to do, was to submit it, but he never did. We’ll probably never know why. A Harvard contemporary of Ritchie’s told the Computer History Museum that it might have had something to do with the requirement of submitting a bound copy to the university library, which Ritchie thought the library should pay for itself. Another theory is that he simply didn’t care, since he’d already landed his dream job at Bell Labs. In any case, because it was never published, only a few copies of the thesis were ever circulated, and none of them have been available to the general public. Until very recently, that is. Historians of science can rejoice because two copies have surfaced and are now digitally accessible through the Computer History Museum. PvG

Energy

Fusion hopeful puts cards on the table

Credit: Ken Filar/CC BY-SA

Hoping to tap into an almost perfect source of energy, scientists have tried to unravel the mysteries of controlled nuclear fusion since the 50s. Their efforts have mostly merged in the international Iter project, which aims to produce the first full fusion reactions in 2035. From the 00s onward, however, privately backed companies started to appear, claiming they can do it faster, better or cheaper.

One of those companies is Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), an MIT spinoff betting on a different magnet technology than Iter to contain the super-hot plasma. This should result in more compact reactors – think tennis court instead of football field. Will it work? Reasonable people disagree about this. But what sets CFS apart from other fusion hopefuls is that it has disclosed its design and science in great detail. In a special issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Plasma Physics, the company’s researchers and collaborators laid out the evidence that their design will succeed. PvG

Old TV doubles as e-bomb

Aberhosan, Wales, 7 AM. British Telecom’s Openreach engineer Michael Jones and his colleagues have been patrolling the village in the pouring rain for an hour when their spectrum analyzers detect a large burst of electrical noise. Tracing it to a nearby house, Jones inquires the unnamed residents about their electrical activities in the past few minutes.

Turns out the occupants had turned on a very old, secondhand television set like they did every day. Finally, mystery solved! Responding to swaths of complaints, over the past 18 months, scores of engineers had visited Aberhosan, trying to figure out why every day, at 7 AM like clockwork, the village’s broadband internet connections would break down. The owners of the TV were “mortified” to find out they’d caused so many problems, reports the BBC. “They immediately agreed to switch it off and not use it again,” according to Jones. PvG

Automotive

Better keep your hands at the wheel

The ‘driver’ of Uber’s autonomous test vehicle that fatally struck a woman in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018 has been charged with negligent homicide. According to the prosecution, Rafaela Vasquez is guilty of distracted driving, even though technically, the car was driving itself. Of course, the very reason she was behind the wheel was to intervene when the autonomous-driving technology failed. Legally, therefore, Vasquez needs to be considered the driver, with the same responsibility to control and operate the vehicle safely as any other

Credit: Dllu/CC BY-SA

NEWS

driver, the prosecution argues. According to a Tempe police report, Vasquez was streaming the TV program “The voice” while driving.

Dashcam video footage shows her looking down at something just before the crash. Last March, the state of Arizona determined that Uber wasn’t criminally liable for the woman’s death. PvG 5

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NEWS PHOTONICS

Effect Photonics’ optical transceivers tune in to the market It’s been quite the journey, but Effect Photonics is finally ready to take the telecom market by storm with its tunable optical transceivers. In doing so, it will give the Dutch Photondelta integrated photonics ecosystem a most welcome boost, too.

Paul van Gerven

I

n January 2011, Boudewijn Docter and colleagues from Effect Photonics left a Silicon Valley building thinking they would never hear from the internet company again. Sure, it had been a good meeting, if a little short – their appointment, a former colleague of Docter’s, couldn’t spare them more than half an hour. But a small Dutch startup with no track record to speak of snaring one of the world’s largest internet companies as its first customer? That seemed a little too good to be true.

“Yet, to our big surprise, one week later, we got an email, asking when we were planning to submit our proposal,” tells Docter, who together with Tim Koene founded Effect Photonics in 2009. Only then, the Eindhoven-based team took a closer look at what their potential customer actually wanted, and whether they could make that happen. “We concluded that the photonic integrated circuit – our core business – was feasible, but its packaging would be a major issue. The kind of sophisticated packaging we needed simply didn’t exist at the time.

However, we did have some ideas on how to cost-effectively develop one,” explains Docter, currently serving as president of the company.

Co-funded by their new-found Silicon Valley patron, Effect Photonics started developing an integrated optical transceiver that can send sixteen different data streams over a single optical fiber cable. This would enable every fiber internet user to have his

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own dedicated bandwidth, without giving him his own fiber cable. Clearly, that would be a major step up from users having to share the connection to their provider with a number of neighbors, resulting in performance loss during peak internet hours.

Photondelta’s growth strategy

But after a couple of years, Effect Photonics’ customer had scaled up its fiber ambitions and decided it didn’t want to wait for new technology after all. When it pulled the plug on the project in 2014, “we thought that was the end of the company,” says Docter.

Photondelta was set up in January 2019 to boost the emerging Dutch integratedphotonics industry. Its mission: to drive growth in terms of turnover (over 1 billion euros), resources (over 4,000 FTE) and number of participating companies (more than 25) by 2026. These goals are already very challenging considering the relatively limited time frame and resources, but on top of that, Photondelta has to operate in a doubletrouble environment: an emerging new technology with (long-term) potential in likewise new emerging applications and markets.

To face this complexity, Photondelta identified four key target markets: medical devices & life sciences, datacom & telecom, infrastructure & transportation and agriculture & food. First, the organization performed a thorough analysis of relevant key trends, drivers and unmet needs by meeting with key prospective customers on a global level. Their unmet needs were then matched with the cluster’s current and future product and technological capabilities.

This resulted, at the end of last year, in the identification and prioritization, based on growth potential, of a limited number of key areas where Photondelta has the potential to further build and expand its portfolio of promising and differentiating solutions and where to focus on to effectively and efficiently target growth.

Earlier this year, dedicated focal area teams, staffed with business and technology experts from companies and knowledge institutes or purposely hired, have been set up and chartered to further sharpen relevant propositions and business/technology roadmaps, in open collaboration with global leading customers and end-users. These insights will drive further expansion of the portfolio offering, acquisition of new customers and cluster partners, as well as guide further Photondelta investments.

The focal area discussed in this article is called “Optical transceivers for ultra-high data transfer for short-haul/metro telecom fiber-based access networks/datacenters.”

Copyright Effect Photonics

It wasn’t. It took another couple of years and some more twists and turns, but Effect Photonics is now moving integrated optical transceivers into production and onto the market. “It has taken us quite a while, but all those years of work have resulted in something much more than a product: we have a technology platform that allows us to create a range of products, each tailored for a specific application. This is exactly what we’ll be doing in the next few years: launching products aimed at the many different telecom applications out there.”

On the map

That’s good news for Effect Photonics but also for the integrated-photonics industry as a whole. Companies like Effect Photonics moving into volume production – and Docter is convinced the volume is there in telecom – will boost the momentum of the technology, allowing it to fan out in other application areas. “It’s like how things evolved in electronics. Chips were originally developed to power computers, but once an industry of a certain size had been established, people started using chips for other

applications. This is how it will happen in integrated photonics as well.”

The Dutch integrated-photonics ecosystem, in particular, stands to gain from the steps Effect Photonics is about to take, even though none of the companies in it have a need for transceivers themselves. United in the public-private openinnovation partnership called Photondelta, these companies are looking to establish a world-leading integrated-photonics industry in the Netherlands (see inset “Photondelta’s growth strategy”). Effect Photonics is working with several partners in the network, increasing not just their business activity but also the knowledge and experience they need to keep moving forward.

The progress that Effect Photonics is making, therefore, represents a very tangible boost to the maturation of the ecosystem.

Conversely, Photondelta has played an important role in getting Effect Photonics where it is today, says Docter. Apart from fostering cooperation and facilitating knowledge sharing, the organization “has really put integrated photonics on the map. Photondelta has provided us with funding directly, but

it has also helped us tremendously in finding funding, both from investors and through collaborative research projects.”

Shock

The chip – or, more aptly: system-on-chip – Effect Photonics’ Silicon Valley customer was looking for was a 16-channel transceiver capable of dense wavelength-division multiplexing. DWDM allows data from incoming signals to be separated and encoded on different wavelengths of light, which are subsequently sent onward through a single fiber-optic cable. At the receiving end, the colors are disentangled and sent to their final destination: the customers of internet service providers. In essence, DWDM dramatically increases the amount of data that can be sent through a fiber-optic cable or network. Or, conversely, it saves a lot of fiber-optic cables.

So, even though the initial customer didn’t go through with it, Effect Photonics was still convinced that its chip made for a great business proposition. “It was clear to us that integrated optics has a lot to offer in fiber-optic networking. The equivalent system composed of discrete components 5

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Copyright Effect Photonics

NEWS PHOTONICS

would be prohibitively expensive. So, after the initial shock of the project getting canceled, we decided to pitch our technology to other networking companies, like Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson.”

It worked: leveraging the interest of networking companies, Effect Photonics closed a new investment round in 2014 to develop a DWDM optical transceiver, this time geared towards less cost-sensitive business applications, such as corporate offices and cellular towers. “The chip would essentially be the same, except we needed only 10 channels, but more bandwidth per channel.”

After another couple of years of development, however, it dawned on Effect Photonics that there was a fundamental problem with their transceiver: even if they would get it market-ready, they probably wouldn’t be able to sell any. “You need transceivers at both ends of the connection. We had been focusing on the transceiver that sends out multiple wavelengths, but at the other end, you need transceivers too, to send a signal 10

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back.” Network operators wouldn’t even consider switching to DWDM before these single-channel (or: single-wavelength) transceivers were available at an acceptable price level. And they weren’t.

Flexible and scalable

This commercial bottleneck may have actually been a blessing in disguise for Effect Photonics. A single-channel transceiver was basically a much simpler version of what the company had been working on all these years. Developing one would be relatively easy, manufacturing it would be less complex, and even the advanced packaging – for which the company had developed a solution in-house at a facility set up in Brixham, in the southwest of England – would retain its advantages.

“We realized we had a great proposition here because we had tunable lasers. In the multi-channel transceiver, we had been taking advantage of that tunability, but only to keep the wavelength from drifting

in response to, for example, temperature changes. For the generation of the light itself, it was more cost-effective to have a separate laser for every wavelength. On the other hand, a single-channel transceiver that can be tuned to a specific wavelength would be a major boon for network operators because they don’t like to keep a different model in stock for every wavelength.”

Ironically, the single-channel transceiver, at the right price level, would even make the multi-channel one unnecessary.

“You can just as easily use multiple singlechannel transceivers. This has a major advantage, actually: you take as many as you need, while in a multi-channel, the number of channels is fixed. It’s a much more flexible and scalable way to move towards DWDM networking.”

Make its mark

From 2016 onward, Effect Photonics focused on the single-channel transceiver. It didn’t take long for the company

Copyright Effect Photonics

to complete a prototype that met all specifications. Next up was the grueling process of meeting the demands of stability, reliability, reproducibility and manufacturing yield.

“We really had to go through a learning curve getting our product market-ready.

Obtaining your first design that meets the specs is wonderful but not nearly good enough to start selling anything. We had to do a lot of optimization – the optimal design not being the one with the best performance, but with the highest yield and acceptable performance.”

“One standard requirement we had to meet, for example, was keeping our transceiver working for a thousand hours at 85 degrees Celsius and 85 percent humidity.

That’s like hanging it just above the surface of a pot of boiling water! Traditionally, optical components have very sturdy packaging to withstand such conditions, using materials like kevlar. We had something entirely new and for cost reasons didn’t

want to go that way. So we had to find our own solutions – and we did.”

Effect Photonics launched its first product this year, a 10 Gb/s DWDM tunable optical transceiver module. It’s 10-20 percent more expensive than a fixed-wavelength transceiver, which is impressive in itself, as tunable is typically twice as expensive as fixed.

Total cost of ownership is where Effect Photonics’ product really shines, however. “We have an autotuning feature, in which the module scans the network for what channel to use. One component, not 40 different model numbers to keep in stock, no engineer required to program it at installation: it’s plug-and-play and hot-pluggable.”

10 Gb/s may not sound like much when transceivers of 400 or 600 Gb/s are being considered for some applications. But there are plenty of applications for which 10 Gb/s is still the best match, assures Docter: his company is already working closely with several companies to get the technology on the road.

The transceivers are already in field trials.

Effect Photonics will move on to higher bandwidths, of course. “No one develops a chip technology for a single product.

We’re now in possession of a technology platform that can relatively easily be expanded upon. Possibly, in other markets than telecom, but right now, we don’t want to distract ourselves.” A 25 Gb/s module is now being manufactured and slated for launch later this year – the 5G community has shown particular interest in this one. A 100 Gb/s version is in development as well and eventually, Effect Photonics will move into the 400-600 Gb/s realm. “At the right volumes, we think that we’ll be able to offer these up to four times cheaper than current solutions.”

Thus, Effect Photonics is finally ready to make its mark in the world. Starting with little more than an inkling of untapped potential, it’s taken the startup the better part of a decade to settle on a winning product, and another couple of years to get it market-ready.

Now it’s time to reap the rewards.

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pinion

EDUCATION Bram Nauta is a professor of IC design at the University of Twente.

Turning the knobs

I

find it incredible how politicians and administrators lack even basic technical and mathematical insights. They use the term “exponential growth” in relation to the virus outbreak, but probably have no clue what it means. For them, it probably means: so much growth, I may not get re-elected. But even a student interviewed on a street in Delft commented on national TV: “I’m a technical student, so I know what exponential growth means: if you plot something in a logarithmic X-axis and logarithmic Y-axis and you get a straight line, then it’s exponential!”

The journalist, who was even more unaware of what exponential growth is, nodded with interest. “Hmm, aha, that makes sense.”

As engineers, we of course understand exponential growth. It’s a property of even a very basic linear first-order system. First-year undergrad stuff. Real-world systems, including our virus outbreak, are more complex than just first order: the system has feedback in the form of measures taken to suppress/release the virus and the system also has significant latency, which consists of, for example, the incubation time.

We all know that control systems with latency are hard to make stable.

Just imagine standing under your shower and turning the knobs to tune the water temperature. If the shower hose was 100 meters long, you’d have to be extremely careful.

But the failures we see in managing this crisis would occur even if the corona system wasn’t as complex as it is. Even if the virus wasn’t spreading exponentially, the measures taken would still fail. Let’s have a look.

The first example illustrates both a total denial of exponential growth and a lack of elementary-school mathematics skills. At the start of the epidemic, the focus was on ‘herd immunity.’ The assumption was that when a large majority of the people would have caught the virus, society as a whole would be protected. With a very optimistic fraction of only 0.5

I’m afraid we’re stuck with this virus for a while percent (1 in 200) of the infected getting really sick and ending up at the intensive care, we only needed to take care that our intensive care capacity of 2,000 beds wouldn’t be exceeded.

Time for a simple calculation. Assume each victim stays about 20 days in intensive care, so there’s a maximum influx of 2,000 / 20 = 100 people per day. With the aforementioned 0.5 percent assumption, this means that 200 x 100 = 20,000 infections per day is the maximum we can handle.

Note that this is a flat rate: no growth allowed at all. If we would be able to do this, it would take 17,000,000 / 20,000 = 850 days to have all 17 million inhabitants infected in a controlled way. That’s 2.3 years.

Another simple calculation is the estimation of the number of tests we need per day. More testing means less latency in the control system, so this is crucial. At the moment of writing, the official target was 30,000 tests per day. This may sound like a lot, but it’s orders of magnitude

away from what we need. If we want to test each inhabitant of the Netherlands, then with 30,000 per day, that would take 17,000,000 / 30,000 = 567 days. That means: every inhabitant can be tested only once per 1.5 years. Talk about latency!

So, I’m afraid we’re stuck with this virus for a while.

Basic mathematical and technological insight appears to be important in managing these difficult times. It would be good if those who turn the knobs of our society would possess these insights.

The good thing is that there are people who understand complex control systems and managing exponential growth. That’s us! We created computers, communication means, the internet, smartphones, tablets, webcams and much more to come.

Almost everything can be done online now. Imagine this virus had come 30 years earlier, how would we have survived? Without the continuous exponential growth via Moore’s law, we’d be in panic sending faxes to each other!

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Mislukken is geen optie!

In het dagelijks leven ben je afhankelijk van een heleboel verschillende producten. De auto waarin je rijdt, het vliegtuig waarmee je vliegt, of de ECG-apparatuur waarmee de activiteit van je hart wordt gemeten. Je verwacht dat alles goed functioneert – simpelweg omdat het moet.

In alle elektronische producten zit een printplaat. Op het eerste gezicht lijken die allemaal op elkaar. Er zit echter een wereld van verschil tussen een normale printplaat en een High Reliability PCB. Het komt allemaal aan op de details, de nauwkeurigheid. Het begint met het ontwerp, de juiste specificaties en het kiezen van de juiste productiepartner. Het omvat ook de logistiek, levernauwkeurigheid en het zoveel mogelijk verduurzamen van het gehele proces.

High Reliability PCBs. Omdat mislukken geen optie is!

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O

pinion

EDUCATION Joachim Burghartz is the director of the Institut für Mikroelektronik Stuttgart (IMS Chips) and the former director of Dimes at Delft University of Technology.

Back in school

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’m back in school thanks to corona. I’m attending live lectures in biology, medicine, pharmacy, statistics, law, psychology, social sciences, public media, material sciences and more. Why? Because our freedom is currently severely impacted by precautionary measures imposed by our political leadership. Those measures are based on figures and numbers. As an engineer, I feel obligated to verify those. I looked at some of those figures in Germany. They raised questions, which I’d like to share with the readers of Bits&Chips.

Let’s take a look at the corona app. After its release in June, about 17.5 million Germans downloaded it, or 20 percent of the German population, when not considering multiple downloads. Beware, these are just downloads; it’s not actual usage. While the German RobertKoch-Institute (RKI) doesn’t publish about that, we know from the similar Swisscovid app that only about 60 percent of the downloads is being used. This lowers the number of likely corona app users in Germany to 12 percent.

According to the Oxford Study, app usage should be at least 15 percent to have any noticeable effect. But even at 20 percent, the reproduction factor R could only be lowered by 0.08, which is within noise level. Is the low usage a matter of lack in public spirit and discipline? No, it’s not.

Only 60 percent of the Germans has a smartphone capable of running the app. Most people above age 65 don’t own a smartphone. Why did our political leaders not consider this before pouring millions into the corona app? Weren’t the seniors the ones we wanted to protect from that virus?

I also learned that the corona PCR test results, which are used to back current political decisions, may not be reliable. One problem is that the test isn’t free of error. Even under lab conditions, sensitivity (ie the percentage of infected people correctly identified as such) ranges between 97.7 and 98.8 percent and test selectivity (ie the percentage of healthy correctly identified as such) is about

Only 60 percent of the Germans has a smartphone capable of running the corona app 98.6 percent. In real life, the effective sensitivity is 70 percent and selectivity is 95 percent, says Dagmar Lühmann from UKE in Hamburg.

At low prevalence of infected persons among the population, this creates issues. The risk threshold for precautionary measures in Germany is 50 within 100,000. With a sensitivity of 70 percent, only 35 of the 50 infected people will be tested positive, while for 15 of them, the test will give a false negative. Those 15 actually infected ones would feel secure and be a risk for others to get infected. With the selectivity of 95 percent, 4,997 of the 99,950 non-infected people will falsely be tested positive and be quarantined for no reason.

The figure of merit of the PCR test (essentially, expressing the usefulness of the test) is the ratio of the

35 predicted cases out of the pool of 50 actually infected ones to the 5,032 total predictions of positives.

For real-life conditions, that figure is as low as 0.7 percent, and even under lab conditions, it only improves to 4.7 percent, while obviously 100 percent is the target.

This relates to the low prevalence of 50 out of 100,000. Hendrik Streeck, a virologist in Bonn, the initiator of the Heinsberg Study, already pointed this out in April. The high prevalence of 15.5 percent in the Heinsberg region close to the province of Limburg pushed the PCR figure of merit to 94.7 percent.

My conclusion is that the current intense testing of people returning home from vacation, though without any symptoms, not only doesn’t make any sense but even leads to wrong and misleading conclusions.

The focus must be on the ill and hospitalized people, says Streeck.

So, my appeal to you as my colleagues, who are used to deal with numbers and facts in your daily engineering work, is to continuously look at those corona figures and explain them to your relatives, friends and neighbours, so that we all can participate in a democratic debate, always leaving room for different opinions, but never for misleading numbers and figures.

5 15

B a c kg r o u n d

Semicon

Bringing high-performance motion systems to a whole new stage In the world of high-performance machine development, the Netherlands is planted firmly on the cutting edge – particularly in the field of chip-making equipment, used in the semiconductor and electronics domain. To stay ahead of the ever-evolving demands and consumer expectations, key players in Dutch high tech are teaming up as part of the Imsys-3D public-private partnership to create next-generation high-performance motion systems.

Collin Arocho

W

hen it comes to the world of silicon, the chips that are feeding the electronics boom, Dutch equipment and machine builders such as ASML and ASMI are planted at the top of their fields, globally. However, to keep a competitive edge in the production of state-of-the-art machines, companies like these must balance their customers’ current needs with innovation. Thanks to the public-private partnership of the Imsys-3D project, high-tech equipment makers are getting a big boost in planning for the future, as collaborators utilize cutting-edge technology to develop new and improved methods to build next-gen high-performance motion systems.

For the high-tech equipment industry, high-performance motion systems are a vital piece to the puzzle. However, to meet future performance targets and time-tomarket demands, new design-optimization methods are much needed. Enter the Imsys-3D project team, which includes Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), mechatronics and motion control specialist MI-Partners, the industrial 3D-printing equipment manufacturer Additive Industries, lithography systems provider ASML and software company Infinite Simulation Systems. “Our goal for this project is to use computers to generate new designs for 16

5

a wafer stage automatically,” explains Arnoud Delissen, PhD student at TU Delft.

“By using unique algorithms, computers can design optimal shape and dynamic properties, which can then be 3D-printed, offering never before realized efficiency – allowing industrial partners to work toward the next generation of machines.”

Precision

In chip manufacturing equipment, the wafer stage, also called a chuck, is a crucial positioning module in the chip-making process. When the large disk or wafer of silicon

Imsys-3D

As part of the Imsys-3D project, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), MI-Partners and Additive Industries joined forces, together with ASML and Infinite Simulation Systems, to create a next-generation, 3D-printed wafer stage for improved performance and accuracy in the chip-making process.

The project is co-funded by Holland High Tech, Top Sector HTSM, and the Dutch Research Council (NWO), with a public-private partnership grant for research and innovation.

is ready to be printed with a chip pattern, through the so-called lithography process, the silicon is placed by a robot on the magnetically-levitated stage, which moves very precisely under extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light – exposing only specific parts of the silicon to the light to print patterns.

“The exactness and speed of this movement are critical for productivity, but fast motions easily trigger mechanical vibrations that destroy the accuracy of the lithography process,” describes Matthijs Langelaar, associate professor of computational engineering at TU Delft. “Making the chuck stiffer isn’t an easy remedy, since adding more mass results in higher forces as well.”

Typically, to solve this issue and limit the vibrations in wafer stages operating at high speed, it would take teams of engineers conducting dynamic optimization analysis – a real-time test and evaluation process of the mechanical design – to determine how best to control the movements for optimum precision. The Imsys-3D collaboration, however, is looking to automate and improve the procedure. “Currently, this is an iterative process where the mechanical designers create a design and pass it along to dynamics engineers for analysis. Then the system would move to a control engineer to determine what kind of control bandwidth

The final product in action: the printed optimized stage, magnetically levitated in its setup at MI-Partners.

of freedom, which you simply don’t have in conventional machining,” adds Laro. “By using this, we’ve been able to markedly improve the performance of the stage, which is important because it would be next to impossible for human minds to just develop that structure, which is now synthesized through the algorithm.”

Credit: Imsys-3D

Credit: MI-Partners

First time right

Back view of two printed chucks as produced by the Metalfab1 of Additive Industries. After separation from the build plate and post-processing of the magnet interfaces, the chuck is ready for use in a motion system.

we can get out of the machine,” describes Dick Laro, system architect at MI-Partners.

“Several years ago, we started looking into how to make this more efficient and we set out to combine these three separate steps and integrate them into one, as part of a new integrated optimization process.”

“This integrated way of working can reduce the lead time of a stage design from several weeks to a single day, while also providing superior performance,” adds Delissen.

Topology optimization

After years of planning, research and development, the collaborators were getting close to their goals, at least in simulation.

Then, two years ago, the coalition was joined

by Eindhoven’s Additive Industries, which brought its state-of-the-art 3D-printing capabilities using metal-based additive manufacturing (AM) technology. As a unit, the consortium focused its design work on to-

pology optimization, aka generative design, which takes a 3D model and analyzes how to whittle away layers of excess material to achieve ultra-efficient designs, while still fitting the size, weight and functional requirements of the customer.

In designing their first demonstrator, collaborators adhered to a strict set of parameters from one of their industrial partners. The new chuck needed to have a specific shape, a weight profile of roughly 8 kilograms and needed to measure 400 by 400 by 50 mm – a very large volume in the metal 3D-printing world. “This is a real benefit of our system and metal AM technology, the complete freedom of shape and design – allowing the algorithm to optimize in a broader space,” highlights Harry Kleijnen, key account manager at Additive Industries. “We’ve created printed structures that you simply cannot create with any other technology available today. This is a major contributor to the uniqueness of this project and the promise of the future.”

“By utilizing these methodologies for topology optimization, we could fully exploit the flexibility offered by additive manufacturing. As Harry described, it gives you a lot

High tech highlights

A series of public-private success stories by Bits&Chips

While many development projects take years of trial and error and analysis, the Imsys-3D project team has made big strides in progress over a relatively short time. Though the collaborators have run into several challenges, ranging from changing dimensions of the stage requirements to the pure computational issues caused by the limitations of today’s technology, the group has already realized success. In fact, with all parties giving input throughout the optimization stage of the chuck, the final design was sent to Additive Industries and prepared for the first trial print. “Going into this last phase of the design, we reviewed the plans, allowing our team to bring in the specific AM constraints, like maximum angulation of surfaces, to be integrated into the algorithm, then it was ready to go,” recalls Kleijnen. “The design was perfectly suited to print. We printed two parts, which took roughly 10 days total – 5 days per part. We could achieve this in half the time, but we opted to play it safe for the initial print. In the end, the newly printed chuck was a total success from the very first time, which is a big step forward.”

Now, the aluminum-alloy wafer stage, weighing in at 8.5 kilos before processing, is heading to MI-Partners to be integrated into the machine and tested. Group expectations are that this newly printed chuck can offer twice the performance as its predecessors while limiting vibrations and ensuring precision and accuracy. “Going forward, our goal is to have a completely automated design process within a year,” expresses Langelaar. “MI-Partners will be working to fully integrate the chuck with the motion controllers to show the viability and potential gains to industrial stakeholders. In the end, we think this will offer unparalleled efficiency for those making the chips, which means cutting-edge technology can become more affordable to end-users and consumers.”

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INTERVIEW MARK ROBINSON

YOU SHOULD LEARN HOW TO PRESENT Picture the last presentation you attended. What was it about? How did it make you feel? Were you inspired?

If you’re a high-tech professional, the respective answers are probably – don’t know, bored and not in the least. Mark Robinson, senior software consultant at ASML through TMC, is out to change that.

Jessica Vermeer

M

ark Robinson isn’t a natural presenter. “I was terrified of standing in front of a group.

Hated it.” That was until he took a course called “Verbal mastery,” taught by Remco Claassen. “Remco was able to keep our attention from early in the morning until late in the evening for days in a row.” In that course, Mark learned all of Claassen’s techniques.

It was an eye-opener for Mark. “I spend the next ten years applying all these techniques to keep people’s attention and my presentations kept

getting better,” he reminisces. In the meantime, he saw how his technical co-workers really struggled with speaking. “Not that they found it hard, just that the presentations were often so boring.”

ally read the text from the slides to the people.

Mark was baffled. “These technical people are super smart. They don’t want people reading to them, they can read themselves. So what’s the added value of the presenter? Nothing.”

As Mark walked past the company reception, an idea suddenly hit him.

“I thought of a way to communicate the problem,” he says. He decided to take one of the best speeches of the 20th century and deliver it using the technical Powerpoint presentation format. “I could show how ridicu-

Reading party

So why are most presentations so mind-numbingly boring? Mark hit his boiling point in 2013. He had just attended a talk by a very senior technical manager. The manager had stood in front of a packed room. His slides were full of text and he liter-

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Credit: Mark Robinson

lous it was: how you can completely destroy a message by presenting it in a bad way.”

Exactly fifty years to the day after Martin Luther King made his famous “I have a dream” speech, Mark delivered his version through Powerpoint at TMC. The evening was a success and he went on to give several similar talks, at his then customer, ASML, finally culminating in a presentation at TEDX Eindhoven in 2016.

After seeing the TEDX talk, people asked Mark to train them. “So I started giving workshops,” he explains. “First in the evenings and then as a full-day workshop. TMC completely supported this entrepreneurial behavior, even when I later did it under my own name: Mark Robinson Training.”

Stuck in a box

Those workshops were popular. “The average score went up from a 9/10 at the start to now 9.5/10,” boasts Mark. There was just one frequent criticism – where’s the handout?

Can you recommend a book? And

Mark couldn’t. “So I decided to write one.” He started writing in September 2019 and in June 2020, his book “Speak inspire empower – how to give persuasive presentations to boost your confidence and career” was published.

Mark: “I’ve already had many glowing reviews of my book. One person said it was like a TED talk in book form. Another said it was like getting a complete workshop, because of all the practical exercises I give the readers.”

It may seem strange, a software engineer publishing a book on presenting. But Mark dislikes such labeling. “People can very easily put a label on you. For example, I’m a software engineer. But that’s not my core. Don’t let yourself be stuck in someone else’s box: be who you’re meant to be. Don’t be limited by other people’s expectations.”

“If you can present well on any topic, you’ll be seen as the expert on that topic. That’s great for your selfconfidence, which benefits every area of your life, both personally and pro-

fessionally. My book will teach you not only to present well but also how to speak persuasively. So everyone should read it,” Mark laughs.

Positive feedback

And self-confidence is key, especially in presenting. That’s the magic of his workshops, says Mark. “During my workshops, everyone gives only positive feedback. They find it hard to receive at first, but by the end, the atmosphere is amazing. The participants are floating off the ground.”

But how can we learn with just positive feedback? “It’s a powerful technique,” Mark reveals. “As you’re giving positive feedback, you teach yourself what’s great. Besides, 90 percent of giving a good speech is confidence. 9 percent is the techniques I teach and just 1 percent is the little details. So why focus on the 1 percent?”

Mark is hence convinced that anyone can learn what he learned. “If a shy, nerdy guy like me can go on to give a TEDX talk and write a book on this topic, you can learn how to present as well. And you should.”

5 19

INTERVIEW LUUD ENGELS

UNDERSTANDING HOW TO GENERATE VALUE – WITHIN TIME AND BUDGET As a project manager, system architect and crisis manager in the high-tech industry, Luud Engels has a reputation for not mincing words. In addition to his consultancy work, he recently started as a system architecture trainer at High Tech Institute. “Clear communication is key in complex development environments.”

René Raaijmakers

Y

ou don’t want to start with Luud Engels about how open-minded and communicative we are in the Dutch high tech.

He’ll be forceful in his response, underlining just how hypocritical it is to believe that. “Here in the Brabant region, we’re not that open at all.

Just stand at a coffee machine and listen. We’re not talking with you, we’re talking about you.”

When it comes to direct communication – or rather, confrontation – Engels has a reputation. A few months ago, he was sent packing after strongly expressing – according to his client – what was wrong within the company. “I’m convinced that at the right time, you can say anything to anyone – be it in a team meeting or a discussion between two people. Of course, most Dutch don’t do that. But I don’t seem to excel at it either because I sometimes put things so bluntly that people tell me to get lost.”

Engels’ appreciation of factual and clear communication comes from his many years of experience as a project manager, a system architect, a crisis manager and a member of the management team at engineering firm TMC. His advice for development environments: “Speak your mind.

Also, about personal stuff. It’s perfectly fine to tell someone his blue shirt bothers you. But statements like ‘Microsoft sucks and Apple is good’ don’t help. Make it factual: are 20

5

we going to work object-oriented or process-oriented? Are we going to use glass or titanium? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? Talking about glass, I don’t need to know the whole history of glassworks. I want the five key criteria – in numbers, not in positives and negatives. If you know the dominant parameters, you also know how to measure them and we can agree on the first development steps to make the measurements possible.”

Engels emphasizes that in the development of high-tech systems, several roads lead to Rome and that it’s important to stick to the choice made. “Make sure the whole team is at least on the same path, rather than endlessly searching for the only right solution – which, by definition, doesn’t exist.”

The laws of Luud

But sometimes, even the simplest of things can go wrong. “Once, after a positive conversation with a client, I received the report in colloquial Dutch. I asked if the client representatives had approved the text. Of course, they had not. So I insisted on writing it down in English, presenting it to the client and asking them for their approval. After all, it’s often about decisions with far-reaching consequences. Still, syncing with the customer proved a daunting task.”

The outsider

Engels’ extensive technical career started with a study of electrical engineering, after which he joined Sattcontrol, a Swedish industrialautomation specialist. He programmed PLCs for egg-grading machines, dairy factories and automated

• If the financial people take over, the engineering interest becomes secondary; if the engineers take the lead, it will be financially broken (About balancing tech and money in high-tech OEMs) • The client who asks for a crisis to be averted is half the culprit or part of the crisis in question (About crisis management) • I firmly believe in the power of the outsider (About the crisis manager) • We talk past each other: one talks in Newtons per square meter, the other in bits per second (About communication and collaboration in high tech) • A crisis doesn’t go away by getting rid of the people who put their finger on the sore spots (About stranded development projects)

the Dutch Department of Waterways and Public Works, eventually taking on leadership roles. Later, audits were added to the mix. He estimates that he’s assessed about twenty projects.

“After a day of walking around, you know what’s going on and where the project went wrong,” he says. Smilingly: “And certainly not because I’m so smart, or because I saw so much, but mainly because I was an outsider.”

Engels firmly believes in the power of the outsider. “You arrive at companies where things have gone completely wrong and then you’re allowed to walk around and speak to 5-10 people. They all have an opinion about the project in crisis. You get to hear the whole story. People want to pour their hearts out. You hear what’s wrong, and above all: what others aren’t allowed to say.”

The headstrong technician

warehouses. Later, he switched to Fortran for PDP and Vax minicomputers.

After five years, Engels moved to Cap Volmac (later Cap Gemini), where he did projects. While he mainly worked in engineering, Cap’s

core was business automation. “I learned a great deal about developing computer systems and software according to the rules.”

Engels started for Cap at ASML, he then worked on highway signaling at

Technicians are a stubborn, headstrong type – and Engels should know, as he certainly fits that mold.

“We’re engineers, aren’t we? We think like this: ‘I’m an electrical engineer and according to my calculations, it’s 5 volts. If you don’t get it, I’ll explain again, but the outcome remains 5 volts. You’re crazy, not me.’ While in projects, it’s mainly about effective collaboration. That’s the difficult part.

One talks in newtons per square meter, the other in bits per second. One talks about the goal, the other about the solution. The high tech is one big Tower of Babel. That starts with requirements and continues through to design, integration and testing. Just as well: if I do a project myself and an outsider comes in, he or she will also shoot holes in it.”

Engels prefers to step in when the crisis is at its deepest. Take the Fusion project that ran at Philips at the end of the nineties. Its ambitious goal was to use a single platform to cover the mechanical, electrical and software construction for medical diagnostic systems. The idea was that cost savings through reuse would justify the extensive operation. “The director 5 21

INTERVIEW LUUD ENGELS outlined his problem as follows: every month, thirty new developers joined the project and every month, they told him that completion was delayed for another two months.”

Engels, again, applied the power of the outsider. “The outsider is allowed to speak up. The deeper the crisis, the more receptive one is to outside messages. Usually, other people have already had a look at it. But often, they put their fingers on sore spots that they weren’t allowed to point to and ended up having to leave. They asked me to replace the current project leader because he couldn’t make up for the delay. But a crisis doesn’t go away when you get rid of the people who put their finger on the sore spots. Instead, I went to help the incumbent project leader. Together, we contained the crisis by adjusting the scope and working with early feedback. One of my laws is: the client who asks for a crisis to be averted is half the culprit or has at least a dominant part in it.”

Is it tunnel vision?

“Please note: you’re talking about very competent people with very relevant arguments and tons of knowledge. But gradually, the solution or working method has been placed in different silos. Very skilled people wear down paths, creating trenches that are so deep that you can barely look over the edge. Everyone has his trench and is defending it stubbornly.

You hear people say things like: ‘This isn’t negotiable!’ When you hear that, it points you to where it went wrong and where a possible beginning of the solution lies.”

Where does the solution start?

“The first law of crisis management is containment. With Fusion, it meant that they had to stop adding thirty people per month. Instead, they had to cut twenty a month and reduce scope. The deeper cause – in my opinion – was pure self-overestimation.

The platform idea for software alone is a major challenge. But when you start including mechanics and electronics, for all diagnostic products, 22

5

it becomes too much at once. It’s difficult enough to develop electronics, software and mechanics together for a single system, but trying to develop one platform for different product lines in one project is naive, to say the least. At the time, they also had to work with developers in Bangalore, and they wanted to go from CCM level 2 to level 3 at the same time. That had to stop right away. You need to limit the scope of a project in crisis and postpone long-term improvement initiatives.”

“It’s often the case that the technicians already know what’s wrong and so does management. Both are right, but they won’t reach a solution together. Much later, I did a job at Philips DPS, where I saw that Philips had made significant progress. Putting fingers on sore spots, however, was still not allowed, unfortunately.”

How does this get done the right way?

Start small, says Engels. “You need early feedback, preferably a launching customer. I’ve heard Martin van den Brink say it many times at ASML: put everything together, show me that it works. Then he challenges people by stating: ‘Your physics don’t work.’

There was a lot of that during early integration. Much later, the industry introduced fancy words for it, calling it Scrum, Agile and rapid development. But the point is that you need feedback, and it’s important to start getting it at an early stage. The goal has to be to deliver every six weeks and to deliver something that actually works. If not, you have the means available to find out why it failed, why the physics didn’t work. At that point, you might have to accept that

System architecting in Leuven

Luud Engels will lead the mid-November edition of the System Architect (Sysarch) training in Leuven. Engels has extensive experience as a project manager, system architect and crisis manager in the high-tech industry. For more information and to check availability, be sure to visit the High Tech Institute website.

you’re not going to meet your deadline. What you definitely shouldn’t do is bring in more people.”

“When technicians tell you they need more time to investigate something, you have to get suspicious.

Van den Brink is also a master at assessing or challenging that.”

Another necessity: “Make people owners of a problem. Certainly in environments with complex developments, where there’s not even a beginning of a solution and new inventions are required, everyone feels like the master of their idea, with their personal insight. We Dutch are also very good at seizing every opportunity to talk about this in a very broad sense. But you simply need to take the next step. That’s the only thing from which a project benefits. So if you’re sitting in a room with thirty people and problems come up, the project manager, the crisis manager or the system architect must assign a person responsible to each problem.

This also includes deadlines for results and decisions.”

According to Engels, it’s definitely in the culture of ASML, but there was a point in time when it got out of hand there. “They appointed an owner for everything and called him a project leader. McKinsey once did an analysis at ASML of project leaders and project sizes. They found that, on average, there were 1.2 people on each project, including the project leader! Then you run the risk that these owners, these project leaders, start competing over available resources and the underlying issue disappears into the background.”

The product manager defines the product that will perform well in the market. He determines the available budget – often too little – and negotiates with the system architect whether it can be made for that money. Engels: “It’s a balancing act. With mature products, it works differently, but with a first development, you want a proof of concept as soon as possible. Or at least a confirmation that your ideas are right and that you’re on the right track.”

manager calls the system architect: at the end of next week, we’ll make a decision! It’s all about direction, coming up with a format that involves knowledgeable people to arrive at quantified statements with which you can really make an assessment.”

To what extent should the system architect, like the product manager, talk directly to customers?

“In high tech, that’s beyond dispute.

That’s where the product manager and the system architect come together. They have to. The former has more business focus, the latter looks at the technology and whether it’s feasible. They’re two sides of the same coin. This collaboration between the product manager and system architect is becoming more and more commonplace. However, I still see system architects who downplay the necessary coordination with the project manager or operational management. You then run the risk that a solution that perfectly meets mar-

ket needs will ultimately fail in the realization phase.”

In smaller development projects, with ten to twenty developers, one person can take on the role of both project manager and system architect. In larger projects, with tens or hundreds of developers and several dozen suppliers, it’s important to split up. Engels has experience in both roles. “The project manager sets hard deadlines and a system architect has to work with them.”

“The project manager must define which issues the system architect still has to solve and with whom. Together, you discuss the ins and outs, weigh the benefits and concerns, decide on key parameters, and then the project

A system architect has a major impact on product development, yet often has a less than visible role.

“He’s an experienced technician, but his value lies primarily in his view of the business. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the system architect knows the market in which his product or system is going to land. This is necessary to translate the market and product requirements into the system requirements and then outline the design.”

It takes quite a bit of experience to reach that level. At the same time, Engels observes that the concept of a system architect is subject to inflation. “Nowadays, there are architects all over the place. A software architect is usually a senior software developer, a requirements engineer or someone in charge of engineering. I wouldn’t say anything to the detriment of such a lead engineer. Still, the difference with the system architect is that the latter has to know the business, understand how value is generated and thus understand why it has to be done within a certain amount of time and money.”

“This is also the case in construction. Your architect asks you what you are going to do with your future house and adapts his design accordingly. Are you going to cook a lot, or do you mainly want to drink wine? That’s why Van den Brink does so well at ASML. He goes to customers and explains what kind of litho systems they need. He knows the market like no other. Even stronger, he dictates the market. That means he understands the goals and the timing of chip manufacturers like no other, including what their production processes look like. If they talk about critical dimension and overlay, he can explain that his machine can do that and also substantiate why.”

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ORDER NOW

“ASML’s Architects is an impressive book, a curious book and a book for the curious. (…) Clearly a labour of love by Raaijmakers but nonetheless an easy read.”

Peter Clarke, eeNews, February 1, 2019 “Rene Raaijmakers’ book on the history of ASML is a monumental work in its depth and breadth from ASML’s beginning through 1996. (…) No tech company’s history has ever been covered to such a degree.”

Dan Hutcheson, The Chips Insider, February 1, 2019 PB

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techwatchbooks.nl/architects

O

pinion

THE HEADHUNTER Anton van Rossum anton.van.rossum@ir-search.nl

Ask the headhunter H.K. asks: At the beginning of this month, my annual contract with a large American technology company in the east of the Netherlands ended. I’m looking for a C-level position from operations to global logistics and trade compliance, preferably within the high-tech industry. I also have solid experience in the field of marketing communication and portfolio management.

During my career in Tunisia, I progressed to a position with great responsibility, in which I reported directly to the CEO. To challenge myself, I came to the Netherlands as an independent young woman looking to build a career. I hadn’t expected to be judged on my appearance. I’m 36 years old, have a BBA and 15 years of work experience, but people always think I’m at least ten years younger than my age. My height will also play a role here – I’m 1.55, shorter than most of my colleagues. I feel like I’m considered a sex object and that I’m not being judged on my abilities.

A good case in point is a recent job interview in which I didn’t get a single question about my skills or ambitions. It seemed that the interviewer was only interested in how my employer had set up several business processes. My role and possible contributions were apparently not important. I also had the feeling that the interviewer was undressing

me with his eyes. It got to the point where I told him, at the end of the conversation, that I wasn’t interested in a follow-up.

I thought maybe we could have a call and discuss options?

The headhunter answers: I must admit that I’m not familiar with the market segments that may be relevant and interesting for you.

I limit myself to the semiconductor and high-tech/deep-tech sectors.

I don’t think you’re ready yet Other headhunters, such as Michael Page and Mercuri Urval, have a broader focus and can certainly help you further.

I would like to add a few comments to what you write about your ambitions. You’re quite demanding on yourself and others. You have to watch out for the pitfalls this can bring, such as frustration, stress and burnout. You desire a “C-level” position and the appropriate salary, but you’re constantly concerned about being underestimated in your work and being assigned less important jobs. However, keep in mind that there may be people in your department who may have very different

ideas and perhaps the same ambitions as you. They may also have been working there for longer and have better qualifications than you.

If you’re looking for a managerial position, you need to have the right social and communication skills – in addition to your ambition. You also need to have the necessary mental resilience and perseverance.

Considering, I wonder whether it’s realistic to already pursue a “C-level” position in a company the size of your current or previous employer.

After all, thousands of people work there and they turn over billions.

With all due respect for your resume, skills and personality, I don’t think you’re ready for that yet.

Instead, I think it’s better to focus on growing companies of a smaller size (SME), where you can make a difference through your experience and commitment. You can grow with them and achieve your aspired top position.

You certainly don’t have to tolerate inappropriate behavior and comments of a sexual nature in the workplace. Any self-respecting organization will take appropriate action against this. I completely understand that this annoys you, but all you can do is keep your cool and report incidents.

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BITS&CHIPS

BENELUX RF

NOVEMBER

2020

CONFERENCE

ONLINE

O p e n i ng ke y n o t e 09:00

Implementation challenges and opportunities in beyond-5G and 6G communication Ulf Gustavsson (Ericsson)

10:00

Break

Silver sponsors

5 G /6 G 10:15

5G and beyond – NXP’s contribution to the demand for bandwidth Marcel Geurts (NXP)

10:45

6G – Where do we (want to) go?

Ulf Johannsen (Eindhoven University of Technology)

11:15

Break

M illi m e t e r- w ave Bronze sponsor

Partners

11:30

Vector gain based EVM estimation at mm-wave frequencies Luca Galatro (Vertigo)

12:00

CMOS mm-wave radars for smart IoT and cognitive sensing Jan Craninckx (Imec)

12:30

Break

A nt e n n a s 13:00

Simulating large antenna arrays Michel Arts (Astron)

13:30

Analysis of mutual coupling in antenna arrays using only the far-field data of an isolated element Tomislav Marinovic (KU Leuven)

14:00

Break

Advanced technologies

Powered by

PB

BENELUXRF.COM 5 #BCRF

14:15

Antenna in package for mm-wave applications: how to reduce losses?

Francesca Chiappini (CITC)

14:45

Designing RF circuits using TSMC technology in the new normal Kees Joosse (TSMC)

15:15

Break

Cl o s i ng ke y n o t e 15:30

Broadband circuits for high-speed optical transceivers Johan Bauwelinck (Ghent University) Subject to change

THEME RF

THE ART OF DESIGNING AND BUILDING RF POWER AMPLIFIER APPLICATIONS Market demand for higher speeds and larger bandwidths drives the move from 4G to 5G. Going to higher frequencies makes the power amplifier application design even more challenging.

For the customers of Ampleon, Bruco Integrated Circuits develops efficient PA modules for 4G/5G base station applications in the range of 0.6-4 GHz. Martijn Brethouwer Mark Gortemaker

F

eaturing lower latency, higher capacity and increased bandwidth, 5G is a significant evolution of today’s 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) standard. The 5th generation of mobile networks has been designed to meet the steep growth in data and connectivity demand of modern society, the ever-expanding internet of things with billions of connected devices and tomorrow’s innovations.

They’ll initially operate in conjunction with existing 4G networks before evolving to fully stand-alone networks in subsequent releases and coverage expansions.

5G applications operate in three frequency bands. The low-band (600700 MHz) base station tower has a large area coverage with a ten kilometer radius, combined with a narrow bandwidth and speeds of 30-250 Mb/s. In the mid-band (3.4-3.8 GHz in Europe), the tower covers a radius of four kilometers and supports 100900 Mb/s. Together, these are called sub-6 GHz bands. The high band (2627.5 GHz) in the millimeter-wave (mm-wave) spectrum services a radius of less than one kilometer with typical speeds of 1-3 Gb/s. Higher frequencies bring higher bandwidth and speed, but lower area coverage.

To be able to send and receive more data simultaneously, and thus con-

nect more users at the same time, 5G employs ‘massive’ MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antennas, consisting of a very large number of antenna elements. Rather than broadcasting in all directions, beam steering technology allows the base stations to send the radio signal directly to the targets, with advanced signal processing algorithms determining the best path. Bundling all transmitted power to the user increases efficiency. 5G MIMO commu-

nication to mobile devices will ride the mm-wave (27 GHz).

From the antenna, the base stations run a wired backhaul to a receiver/ amplifier subsystem that boosts the cellular signal to the mobile device and an optical fiber connection to the core network. Typically, there are multiple amplifiers, each tuned to a specific frequency band, with power, efficiency and linearity as important parameters. For customers of Ampleon, Bruco Integrated Circuits designs

For customers of Ampleon, Bruco Integrated Circuits designs so-called Doherty amplifier module prototypes.

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THEME RF so-called Doherty amplifier module prototypes, the schematic and PCB layout of which are used as a basis for base station equipment development and tests. These prototypes incorporate more broadband amplifiers, covering multiple frequency bands (eg 700-900 MHz or 1.8-2.3 GHz).

Ideal model

The specifications of the Doherty amplifier are a combination of requirements from wireless standards and Ampleon’s customers. The full set includes electrical specs like frequency range and output power but also mechanical specs like size constraints and PCB material. Incorporating these mechanical constraints already in the prototype design will make the integration process easier for the customer.

The Doherty topology is a very common choice for base station amplifiers. It consists of two separate paths, both of which serve a specific

purpose. The carrier path is always amplifying the input signal and produces output power over a wide range of input powers. The peaking path is biased in class C, which means that it will only produce output power when the input signal is large enough. It’s used to amplify the high power peaks of the input, hence the name. When designed properly, this topology can produce a good efficiency over a wide output power range and with high linearity.

The most important component in a Doherty amplifier is, of course, the

The block diagram of a Doherty amplifier.

transistor itself. This component is selected to match the requirements with the best performance. The transistor data are provided by Ampleon in the form of measurements, models and/or load-pull files.

The first step of the design is entering the specifications and transistor data in a set of general system calculations. Because the Doherty topology is more elaborate than a single PA, these calculations are also more complex. From their result, a separate set of requirements is produced for both amplifier paths

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and the impedances used throughout the design.

For the PA performance, the output matching circuit is crucial. This part of the design has the most influence on the efficiency and output power, which is why it has the initial focus of the design effort. In our simulation environment, Keysight ADS, the data from the main and peak devices are used to create a design for the output matches and power-combining circuitry. At this stage, the match is constructed from ideal lossless components and the performance will exceed the requirements by a specific margin. This margin is such that when the lossless components are replaced by a more realistic model, the performance equals the specs.

With the ideal model for the output match finished, the design focus shifts to the input side of the amplifier. More specifically, to the frequency response and the power distribution between the two paths.

The assembled amplifier is put to the test in a specialized measurement setup.

model. On a section-by-section basis, the ideal lossless components are replaced by realistic variants. At the same time, the design of each section is adapted to meet the mechanical requirements. This step requires the availability of accurate models for all components and full electromagnetic

Realistic design

Upon completion of the input match, we’ve constructed a fully functioning Doherty amplifier in our simulation environment. This design will exceed the electrical specifications, but it doesn’t yet adhere to the mechanical requirements. Starting with the critical output match, the accuracy of the design is increased by improving the

simulations of parts of the PCB layout with Keysight ADS and Momentum.

Depending on the number of iterations and the required accuracy of the model, making a realistic design can become very time consuming. At Bruco, we’ve optimized the process by using design templates. These are created for specific classes of Doherty amplifiers. For example, we have different templates for low or high-frequency designs and high-bandwidth variants.

The templates greatly reduce our development time and ensure that the design will meet the customer’s mechanical requirements.

The finished PCB design is manufactured using dedicated RF materials. The assembly of the Doherty amplifier is done in-house. To improve the reliability of this process, we use custom tools for fixation and alignment during assembly.

The assembled amplifier is put to the test in a specialized measurement setup in our lab. This fully automated setup can measure all required parameters to characterize the device. Depending on the accuracy of the transistor data and the accuracy of the design in our simulation environment, adjustments can be required. The same Bruco engineer will perform the design, assembly, measurement and tuning of the amplifier, to have an optimal flow and development time. He or she knows all the ins and outs of the design and therefore has the expertise to know which changes have to be made to the amplifier to improve its performance.

When the required performance has been reached, the amplifier is fully characterized. The resulting data is used for the customer documentation. The complete development, from design to characterization, is supported for peak powers up to 1 kW and frequencies up to 4 GHz. Martijn Brethouwer and Mark Gortemaker work at Bruco Integrated Circuits, as an RF design engineer and the sales and business development manager, respectively.

The most important component in a Doherty amplifier is the transistor.

Edited by Nieke Roos

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THEME RF

KLAUS WERNER COOKS UP A NEW SOLID-STATE RF TRAINING RF energy systems have undergone a huge transformation since the early days of the tube-based magnetrons. But according to HTI trainer Klaus Werner, while the crude power of the tube is tough to match, the new generation of solid-state RF integrated circuits offers unprecedented control, efficiency and reproducibility.

Collin Arocho

K

laus Werner didn’t get a usual start in the field of RF energy solutions. After studying physics at the University of Aachen, he came to Delft University of Technology to further develop CVD systems for semiconductor technology. “At the time, I was just meant to be there for six months,” remembers Werner.

But eight years and a PhD in silicon germanium growth in CVD-type systems later, Werner found himself still in Delft. “It was definitely time for a new challenge,” he recalls. Then, in 1995, Werner joined the MOS-3 fab in Nijmegen for 10 years before going to Eindhoven to the Philips team responsible for laser displacement sensors – those that are still used in computer mice today.

The fit wasn’t quite right for Werner, and the 3+ hours of commuting every day for work simply wasn’t working. So back to Nijmegen he went, becoming part of the RF power group at NXP. “The group was mostly concerned with the development of semiconductor technology and devices for high-power, high-frequency applications of RF. Most notably, in the areas of base stations for the cellular network, telephone, radar systems, and to a large extent, radio-TV transmission,” Werner describes.

But it was while he was there at NXP that he saw people were applying the 30

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electromagnetic waves not for communications and data but using their sheer energy to power plasmas for lasers, lights and even medical applications, for example in hypothermia.

White goods

Suddenly, activity in the solidstate RF energy realm really started to heat up, specifically driven by white-goods companies, which got their name from the standard of white-coated exteriors of home appliances. “Whirlpool and several others saw a business opportunity to improve microwave ovens in the way they heat food,” explains Werner. “That’s when we started the RF Energy Alliance, an industry consortium that set out to establish standards, create roadmaps and develop new generations of the technology to build consensus and bring down cost.” But a few years in, and the white-goods companies pulled out, as it was simply taking too long for them to bring down costs to have a competitive offer against the magnetron-powered ovens.

“NXP, as a semiconductor company, wanted to focus on components and the technology behind the components. At the same time, I was focused on pushing forward with openly spreading the knowledge and interest of the technology and its ap-

plications, and in the end, we decided to split,” says Werner. “That’s when I decided to jump into the gap that I saw in the RF-energy field, and created Pink RF – taking on the name ‘pink’ as a nod to the breast cancer support organization Pink Ribbon – with an overall desire to develop the technology for wide use in areas that could really help people’s lives, for example in medicine.”

Sharing knowledge

Despite the RF Energy Alliance folding, Werner was a firm believer in the promise of the technology and knew there was real value in the efforts of the failed consortium. “One of the major hurdles in getting this technology known and used by broader audiences is sharing the knowledge about it,” asserts Werner.

“I was writing articles, preparing workshops and trainings, anything to increase the knowledge. I found that many people just didn’t have a solid idea of how to approach this unusual heat source.” Refusing to give up, Werner came across the International Microwave Power Institute (IMPI), which was doing a lot of the same outreach and promotional work on microwave power that he was looking for in the old RF Energy Alliance. Today, he serves as the chairman of IMPI’s RF energy

section and is responsible for diffusing information around the unique technology and creating training opportunities to share his knowledge.

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to join High Tech Institute. It’s a real institution that goes beyond simply giving workshops. It allows us to better reach technical people and connect with a specific audience and cater to its specific needs,” Werner says enthusiastically. “One of the best parts is that many participants already have a good understanding of what the technology entails.

Everything they’ve already learned in school, about the behavior of waves and diffraction and refraction, still absolutely holds true. That idea alone has major implications, from a foundational aspect. It helps loosen the minds and starts to build perspective around this technology.”

New training

Werner’s first edition of the new “Solid-state generated RF and applications” training is aimed to do just that. The three-day course will give participants an inside view into the developments of the technology, from the previous generation of high-frequency tube-based magnetrons to the modern-day solid-state electronics-based energy source. “In terms of crude power, the magnetrons are tough to beat. The problem, however, stems from the lack of optimization and control of the tube and the degradation of the signal over time,” illustrates Werner. “The new generation of solid-state RF is really being driven by cellular communications, where there’s a need for high power linearity that’s created by transistors and semiconductors. This method creates a stable, efficient and,

more importantly, controllable and reproducible signal that could never be realized by the magnetron.”

“There are many factors that come into play when determining how best to utilize RF energy and we’ll cover a lot of them in the new training. We’ll use a mixture of theory and practice to dig deeper into the technology.

From safety aspects like radiation exposure – which is not a thing – to frequencies, behavior and interaction with matter,” describes Werner. “The reality is that this technology is extremely useful and completely scalable. From heating minute amounts of liquids under very well-controlled circumstances for Covid testing, up to cooking 1,000 liters of soup every hour. This modular technology is applicable from microjoules up to megajoules, with nearly unending possibilities.”

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INTERVIEW JOHAN KNOL (NXP)

TRAINING IS KEY TO SUPERIOR CHIP KNOWLEDGE AT NXP As the electronics and semiconductor domain continues to explode with complexity, engineers are having to step outside of their comfort zones and take on new roles to keep up with the increasing demands of chip performance. For semiconductor giant NXP’s failure analysis department, training employees and broadening its knowledge base is instrumental in holding the leading edge.

Collin Arocho

F

or nearly 25 years, Johan Knol has known exactly where he wanted to be. In 1996, fresh off finishing his master’s degree in electronics with a focus on analog design and semiconductor processing at the University of Twente, he had his eyes set on joining the semiconductor arm of Philips – which was later spun out as NXP. “I saw what Philips was achieving in the semiconductor industry at that time and it was quite impressive. But even then, it was extremely evident to me that the industry needed a major catchup, particularly in the analog-chip world,” recalls Knol, Manager of Failure Analysis for Security and Connectivity at NXP. “I came to Nijmegen to tour their cutting-edge MOS-4 fab, and it really piqued my interest. I knew this was a place where real innovation could be realized, and I wanted to be part of it.”

In his 25 years with the company, Knol has held several positions. First as a device physics engineer, then a process integration engineer – working to improve the overall process from development to manufacturing – before opting for a move to NXP’s failure analysis (FA) department.

“I chose failure analysis because it combines all corners of NXP. Essentially, we work in a state-of-the-art silicon debug lab, where my group is responsible for identifying electrical

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failures within all the new products NXP launches and ensuring all of our products meet the highest quality standards,” describes Knol. “We help the design teams identify issues in the design and manufacturing chains. To do that, NXP provides us with top-of-the-line equipment to handle all the analysis requests, from mixed-signal processing technologies down to 16nm, and using techniques like laser voltage probing, laser frequency mapping and nanoprobing – we do it all.”

Evolving

One aspect of the silicon domain that Knol has encountered in his 2.5 decades in service is just how quickly the industry seems to be evolving.

According to him, engineers, at least in his department, are having to go well beyond their areas of focus and broaden their understanding of NXP’s entire production chain, especially as chip complexity continues to explode. One essential tool he relies on to keep his team sharp: training and personal development.

“Almost no one comes out of university, or even from another department, having a solid grasp of the entire field at NXP. When someone joins our team, they’ve got to learn at least 4-5 different areas of the production chain,” depicts Knol. “It’s only with that knowledge that you can solve

the kinds of problems that we get sent to us – ie a chip isn’t working, but with no clue as to why. Typically, new hires have a background in physics or chemistry or electronics, and maybe they’ll even have experience in analog or digital design but hiring someone with expert knowledge on mixed-signal design and these other disciplines doesn’t really happen.”

For Knol, however, it’s precisely this understanding of multiple aspects and disciplines that’s so crucial to the success of NXP’s FA lab, and why he’s a big believer in training.

Knol: “Our competence program is primarily focused on broadening the knowledge of our engineers. They need to have a broad view of everything involved in creating a chip.”

Digital transition

One driving force that Knol and NXP have experienced in the semiconductor sphere is the transition from analog to digital chips, or at the very least a combination of the two. “At NXP, we’ve had a shift from truly analog design to embedding digital more and more – so mixed-signal designs – and it’s happening ridiculously fast,” says Knol. “But even products that were 100 percent analog in the past, for good reasons, are now embedding more digital cores.”

Knol uses the example of NXP’s smart antenna solutions product

line for 5G applications, where they used to deliver single RF transistors or RF low-noise amplifiers but now have started embedding digital content in that line of chips. “These chips are now much more complex, and the engineers that have spent years perfecting the analog design are now suddenly facing products with digital content. At first, they didn’t know how to deal with that, how to interpret that, or even how to test.”

That’s when NXP’s FA department reached out to High Tech Institute and arranged for an in-company session of the “Test and design-fortest for digital integrated circuits” training. “This shift to digital isn’t going to go away, it’s only going to become more prevalent. As a unit, we decided we needed to establish new competencies in this domain and this training was a perfect opportunity,” highlights Knol. “We chose HTI because of its undeniable link to the high-tech industry. They have a strong understanding of the domain because the trainers are actually from the industry. More importantly, we were able to work directly with them

to tune the content of the course to our specific needs. That was the real strength that we saw in HTI.”

Time management

Of course, the success of any technology company depends on highly skilled and highly technical people.

Sometimes, however, success can also stem from the soft skills of employees – such as good communication, stakeholder management and using time in the most efficient ways.

But as the complexity continues to increase, and engineers are taking on more responsibility, sometimes the soft skills can be a challenge. “We have some really outstanding minds at NXP. Our engineers are some of the best in the world. But one thing we’ve found is that the most specialized technical people can often be lacking when it comes to soft skills,” Knol describes. “Efficiency being key in an environment like this means every day you’re being challenged to do more in your daily efforts.”

This can be a little tricky when trying to balance work, meetings, planning and the many personalities you

encounter in the workplace. That’s why NXP adopted another training from HTI: “Time management in innovation.” “We saw that people were struggling with time management.

To be honest, I was one of them myself. So, we took this training and made it a default course for our people – meaning at some point in time, everyone should take it. And it’s from personal experience that I can say this training is extremely helpful,” states Knol. “People came back from this course having learned new tools to embed better planning in their work, learning how best to establish boundaries and how to address the issues they face in communicating with others. So yeah, that has become another default module that we offer to our people. Time management, education, self-reflection, taking leadership and working in project teams on a global scale. These are the kinds of courses that have become quite important to us. We believe that by investing in these trainings to help our workers enhance their personal development, it makes us a stronger department within NXP.” 5 33

SOFT SKILLS & LEADERSHIP

Dynamics and modelling

Effective communication skills for technology professionals – part 2

Motion control tuning

23 – 25 November 2020 (3 consecutive days) 23 – 27 November 2020 (5 consecutive days)

9 – 11 November 2020 (3 days + 1 evening)

Presentation skills for powerful public speaking

Experimental techniques in mechatronics

Creative thinking – short course

Thermal effects in mechatronic systems

How to be successful in the Dutch high tech work culture

Mechatronics system design – part 1

Consultative selling for technology professionals

OPTICS

30 November – 2 December 2020 (3 consecutive days)

11 November 2020 (1 day)

1 – 3 December 2020 (3 consecutive days)

12 November 2020 (1 day)

12 – 16 April 2020 (5 consecutive days)

24 November 2020 (1 day)

23 & 24 November 2020 (2 consecutive days + 1 evening)

Modern optics for optical designers – Part 1

Creative thinking – full course

Expected January 2021 (15 weekly morning sessions)

24 & 25 November 2020 (2 consecutive days)

Modern optics for optical designers – Part 2

Benefit from autism in your R&D team

Expected January 2021 (15 weekly morning sessions)

3 December 2020 (1 day)

Applied optics

Effective communication skills for technology professionals – part 1

Starts 26 October 2020 (15 weekly afternoons)

14 – 16 December 2020 (3 days + 1 evening)

SOFTWARE

Leadership skills for architects and other technical leaders

Software engineering for non-software engineers

ELECTRONICS

Multicore programming in C++

Starts 8 March 2021 (2 times 2 days, incl. 2 evening sessions)

2 – 4 November 2020 (3 consecutive days)

Electronics cooling thermal design – Online

Design patterns and emergent architecture

2 – 6 November 2020 (5 consecutive afternoons)

9 – 12 November 2020 (4 consecutive days)

Ultra low power for Internet of Things

Speed, Data and Ecosystems

5 & 6 November 2020 (2 consecutive days)

18 & 19 November 2020 (2 consecutive days)

Switch-mode power supplies

Good software architecture

Starts 11 November 2020 (2 modules of 3 days)

Starts 30 November 2020 (4 consecutive days)

Power integrity for product designers

Modern C++

17 & 18 November 2020 (2 consecutive days)

Starts 7 April 2021 (4 days in 2 weeks)

Thermal design and cooling of electronics workshop

Secure coding in C and C++

18 – 20 November 2020 (3 consecutive days)

Online

12 – 14 April 2021 (3 consecutive days)

Advanced thermal management of electronics 8 – 11 December 2020 (4 morning sessions)

Design of analog electronics – analog IC design Starts 1 February 2021 (11 days in 18 weeks)

New Location

SYSTEM System architect(ing) in Leuven (Belgium) 16 – 20 November 2020 (5 consecutive days)

Design of analog electronics – analog electronics 1

System architect(ing) in Eindhoven

Solid State generated RF & applications

Introduction to SysML

MECHATRONICS

Systems modelling with SysML

Starts 1 March 2021 (9 days in 16 weeks)

New

Starts 29 October 2020 (2 evenings sessions)

3 – 5 March 2021 (3 consecutive days)

Advanced motion control

26 – 30 October 2020 (5 consecutive days)

Metrology & calibration of mechatronic systems

23 – 27 November 2020 (5 consecutive days) 4 March 2020 (1 day)

12 – 15 April 2021 (4 consecutive days)

Value-cost ratio improvement by value engineering 20 & 21 May 2020 (2 consecutive days)

27 – 29 October 2020 (3 consecutive days)

Basics & design principles for ultra-clean vacuum 2 – 5 November 2020 (4 consecutive days)

Actuation and power electronics

16 – 18 November 2020 (3 consecutive days)

Passive damping for high tech systems 17 – 19 November 2020 (3 consecutive days)

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B a c kg r o u n d

Electronics

How to design a high-speed PCB NCAB Group’s Randy Wessels gives a couple of design pointers.

Randy Wessels

N

ot so long ago, the words “high speed” didn’t exist in the vocabulary of PCB designers. In those days, their work was all about putting the pieces together and strategizing their way through a physical board layout. Today, they’re dealing with data rates of 10 or even 25 Gb/s. At these speeds, there’s a bunch of invisible forces to worry about, like electromagnetic interference (EMI), crosstalk, signal reflection, material weave and the list goes on and on.

At NCAB Group, we see a lot of customers in need of guidance at the beginning of a project. We help them find the best starting point for a high-speed PCB that’s not only manufacturable but also takes into account the cost and quality drivers. Based on our experience, here are a couple of design tips.

IPC 4103 specifies materials for highspeed/high-frequency applications. FR-4, classified as low-speed, is great when you’re working with clock speeds under 5 Gb/s. It has a decent ability to control impedance and is also known for its low cost – depending on the characteristics.

In the realm of high-speed design, you’ll likely be working with Nelco, SI or Megtron. Each is suited for 5-25 Gb/s clock speeds. The price and lead times are also relatively good.

If your first high-speed design is pushing 56 Gb/s, then you’ll likely end up using a Rogers laminate. This is a high-frequency, high-temperature material known for its good impedance consistency, but it’s also expensive to produce and has long lead times.

Materials

Impedance

Start your high-speed design process with a plan. Without a plan and a strategy for your project, you’ll likely encounter setbacks and unexpected issues. So before even laying down a symbol or connecting a net, you need some kind of a checklist at hand of what you can expect and what you want as an end product.

Document every detail of your board stackup for manufacturing. Take enough time to thoroughly define the stackup requirements. This is a perfect moment to get together with your manufacturer and determine which materials or IPC spec you should use for your board and which specific design rules you should follow.

Another important aspect is impedance matching. When energy is transmitted, the load impedance must be equal to the characteristic impedance of the transmission line. In that case, there’s no reflection in the transmission, indicating that all energy is absorbed by the load. Otherwise, there’s energy loss in transmission.

In high-speed PCB design, impedance matching is related to signal quality. Rather than looking at the frequency, the key is to look at the steepness of the signal edge, ie the rise/fall time. We’re talking high-speed if the rise/fall time is less than six times the wire delay – which is typically 150 ps/inch. In that case, impedance matching is called for.

If there’s a consistent signal propagation speed everywhere on the transmission line and the capacitance per unit length is the same, then the signal always sees a completely consistent instantaneous impedance during propagation. This is called the characteristic impedance of the transmission line. It’s related to the board layer on which the PCB conductors are located, the material (dielectric constant) used by the PCB, the trace width and the distance between the conductor and the plane – it has nothing to do with the trace length. The characteristic impedance can be calculated using software like Speedstack and Si9000.

In high-speed PCB layout, the trace impedance of a digital signal is generally designed to be 50 ohms. This is an approximate number. Generally, the coaxial cable baseband is 50 ohms, the frequency band is 75 ohms and the twisted pair (differential) is 100 ohms.

Help

There are many other things to consider when designing a high-speed PCB. I recommend consulting your PCB supplier when you have questions or need help to achieve a good design for manufacturing.

Randy Wessels is an account manager at NCAB Group. For more information on RF PCBs, see www.ncabgroup.com/rf-radiofrequency-pcb/.

Edited by Nieke Roos

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Quality literature for the high tech

The prestigious book Vacuum Science and Technology (2016) written by three Dutch vacuum specialists is a must-have for everyone working in vacuum-based research, instrumentation, development, production or business.

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On techwatchbooks.nl, you can find exciting books on technology

NEWS COOLING

Built-in plumbing cools chips much more efficiently Integrating a microfluidic cooling system in the heart of a power chip improves cooling performance by a factor of 50, Swiss researchers found.

Paul van Gerven

Cold plate

Elison Matioli and colleagues at EPFL’s Insitute of Electrical Engineering demonstrated microfluidic cooling systems integrated into gallium nitride-on-silicon (GaN-on-Si) chips, which are anticipated as the next-generation power semiconductors.

Wide-bandgap semiconductor GaN has excellent qualities for power applications, but it’s difficult and expensive to make (large) wafers out of the material. Hence the alternative approach to apply it as a thin layer on a silicon substrate. The silicon typically lacks functionality other than ‘carrying’ the GaN, but the Swiss researchers turned it into an active cooling layer by incorporating

microfluidic channels into it – directly underneath the active transistor areas.

Using microfluidics to cool chips is, in itself, not a new idea. In one general approach, a microfluidically cooled ‘cold plate’ is stacked on top of the chip. The drawback of this approach is restricted heat flow. In another general approach, coolant is brought directly into contact with the die’s surface, which is much more efficient.

Pumping coolant through parallel microchannels etched directly in the die offers great performance, for example, but requires high-powered pumping and generates thermo-mechanical stress because of the high temperature gradient that arises.

Big step

Embedding the microchannels into the chip itself is an attractive solution from a thermal management perspective, but such an approach would increase the complexity and cost of constructing the device.

The EPFL researchers managed to simplify the process by combining two design steps into one: in what they call a monolithically integrated manifold microchannel (MMMC) system, the microchannels right underneath the heat sources are integrated and co-fabricated in a single die.

The MMMCs are fabricated in three steps. First, slits are etched into the GaNon-Si substrate. Next, an etching procedure is employed to widen the slits in the silicon, as well as to form sections of channels that connect to produce an interconnected channel system through which the coolant can flow. Finally, the channel openings at the surface are plugged with copper. The power integrated circuit can then be fabricated in the GaN top layer.

Working at Imec, Tiwei Wei, who wasn’t involved in the research, describes the results as “impressive.” Experiments in an ACDC current converter fitted with MMMC cooling “show that heat fluxes exceeding 1.7 kilowatts per square centimeter can be cooled using only 0.57 watts per square centimeter of pumping power. Moreover, the liquid-cooled device exhibits significantly higher conversion efficiency than does an analogous uncooled device, because degradation caused by self-heating is eliminated.”

Wei does point out that some aspects of the invention require further investigation, such as the stability of the modified GaN layer over time. Still, the Swiss research “is a big step towards low-cost, ultra-compact and energy-efficient cooling systems for power electronics,” he concludes.

Credit: EPFL

A

s sophisticated as modern semiconductor devices have become over the years, their thermal management hasn’t changed much. Cooling is a matter of getting the heat away from the belly of the chip and directing it towards a device that disperses it into the environment. In a PC or notebook processor, for example, the heat produced by the billions of transistors is led to an air-cooled heat sink.

This way of heat extraction is fundamentally limited by the thermal resistance between the semiconductor die and its packaging: there’s only so much heat you can rid get off. It’s also inefficient, as cooling requires relatively large amounts of energy.

And, of course, bulky heat sinks take up a lot of space, which in many electronic products is a scarce resource.

Researchers of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) decided they can do better, for power electronics at least.

By designing extensive plumbing into the chip, thus putting the coolant mere micrometers away from where heat is produced, the Swiss managed to increase cooling performance by a factor of 50.

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Establish cohesion among all the different disciplines and departments Rather than sending a few team members to a relevant training, IMS reached out to High Tech Institute to develop its customized in-company edition of the System Architecting training, allowing the company to bring in a broad and diverse group of its team. “From mechanical to electrical and software engineers to the sales team, the goal was to get everyone on the same page, thinking at a system level.�

Currently, the high-tech machine maker IMS is active in delivering machines used in the assembly process for the smart device and automotive sectors, in addition to next-generation headlights and sensors for cars. ims-nl.com hightechinstitute.nl/systems

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O

pinion

INNOVATION Maarten Buijs is roadmap and program consultant at Photondelta.

Government-directed innovation is not the answer

T

he Covid-19 pandemic appears to change who’s in the lead in setting the course of innovation.

Innovation has been very much driven by the forces of the free market, which determine whether or not a new product or service will be profitable and thus provide a reward for the risk and investment of the innovator. For deep tech, the startup model is the dominant model for crossing the so-called valley of death, which all deep-tech innovations have to go through in order to find the right product/market combination.

Going from concept and functional model to profitable product typically takes two decades, with course adjustments and significant investments from mostly private parties needed along the way.

A good example of such a journey is the introduction of microfluidic biosensors for so-called point-of-need testing of diseases and medical conditions. At the moment, I’m involved in setting up a roadmap for the introduction of such sensors based on integrated photonics at Photondelta.

My earliest interaction with them was as a department head at the former Philips Research organization, the Natlab. There, at the end of the nineties, we set up several major projects based on our capabilities in and breakthrough ideas about materials and processing. Research projects into flexible or electrowetting displays, organic electronics, printable devices and wearable devices were started.

Also, a project on microfluidic biosensors was initiated, with detection based on magnetic nanobeads.

When I left the Natlab to focus on R&D of electron microscopes, I lost

sight of the biosensor project. Occasionally, I saw updates of the tortuous route that it had taken in finding the right applicational angle. Later, I learned that it was transferred to Philips Medical Systems, where further significant investments were

An innovation route spanning two decades is characteristic for deep-tech innovation poured into the product development of these sensors. For strategic reasons, it was passed on to Siemens Healthineers, which I assume will bring the product to market in the not too distant future. This innovation route spanning two decades is characteristic for deep-tech innovation.

Now, it’s extremely poignant to realize that had cheap, fast, sensitive and specific point-of-need Covid-19 tests been available on a wide scale half a year ago, history would have taken a different turn. Millions of lives would have been saved, societal progress would not have been set back.

For many, this is a wake-up call to change the way innovation is driven.

If governments would proactively have poured a fraction of the trillions of euros lost to the pandemic into development of among others diagnostic tests, the world would be

in a much better place. Let’s learn that lesson and have governments take the lead in innovation, starting with that looming catastrophe of climate warming, people say. The examples from war time situations (eg the Manhattan project) and rich autocratic surveillance states appear to support this idea.

My own experience has taught me that putting government directly in charge is not the answer and is bound to lead to significant waste.

History has given us enough examples for that, like nuclear fusion or manned space exploration. For societies to be prosperous, as well as equal and free, governments need to focus on creating the right circumstances, not be directive in innovation. Massive investment in science and technology of prevention of pandemics and climate warming is warranted. However, innovation based on the outcome of this must continue to be driven by the forces of the market, within the boundary conditions set by the government.

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HOW TO PROMOTE TECH IN CHILDREN’S EDUCATION Tech companies are facing the problem that educational systems focus on lots of skills, whereas STEAM (Science, Technology, Arts and Mathematics) often remain subsidiary. In the meantime, the tech industry is screaming for newly educated professionals. How to solve this?

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nclude tech in language education One approach to this problem has been successfully implemented by The Inventors.

In their latest Summer School program, the assignment from the local government was to make sure children (4-12 yo) would improve their language skills: read, write, discuss, present.

But how to keep them motivated during the summer holiday? The surprising answer was: tech!

Inventing is popular It might not come as a surprise to you that children like inventors. To them, inventors are really smart people who become famous because of the magical stuff they create. And of course, the children are right. So if you make inventing the central theme in your educational project, children will even like the implicit language lessons. It’s only a small step from inventing to tech: building and presenting your own inventions is fun for almost every pupil.

650 new inventors this summer Last summer in the city of Eindhoven, 650 children went to summer school to improve their Dutch language. Many of them were children from expats working in tech companies.

Others were children from refugees and also children from Dutch-speaking families were there. One thing that connected them all was The Inventors program. And yes: their language skills improved. But what really connected them was the imagination of becoming real inventors when they grow up. In fact: this summer, they already became real inventors while presenting their creations on deuitvinders.com!

Support from tech companies Many schools currently work on new programs to decrease the backlog in education as a result of the corona lockdown. The Inventors program is a perfect basis for schools to address this issue. All tech companies sharing this vision are invited to support the Inventors Foundation. It’s in their interest as well.

The Discovery Factory is there to inspire youngsters for a future in design and technology. Projects are supported by tech companies such as ASML, Brainport Industries, Daf Trucks, Frencken Europe, Hager, NTS Group, Philips, Stam en De Koning and VDL Group, and by Bits&Chips as the media partner.

discoveryfactory.nl

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Industrial automation

From manufacturing data to continuous process improvement As a software professional and a member of the Brainport High Tech Software Cluster, Angelo Hulshout has been looking into the possibilities of Smart Industry for some years now. This spring, he took up the challenge to bring the benefits of production agility, as he calls it for now, to the market and set up a new business around that. Currently, he’s working out the plan and making the first realization steps – with first potential customers in the Netherlands and Italy.

Angelo Hulshout

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n each 21st-century manufacturing plant, production is controlled to a more or lesser extent by software. Individual machines are controlled by software running on a PLC, a soft-PLC server or a dedicated controller. Production lines are controlled by production control software (PCS) and whole factories by manufacturing execution systems (MES). For planning and logistics, a dedicated or commercially available enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is added. At the same time, a lot of plants still use spreadsheets and written notes to analyze production performance, machine configuration or logistics planning.

Smart Industry, or at least part of it, aims at integrating these software systems and the data they use and generate into a cleverer solution. Combining all the data allows for more thorough and accurate analysis, and based on that, process improvements and cost/benefit optimizations. This can be done in the context of a single factory but also across factories, with or without including logistics.

Production agility

With this basic concept in mind, and while working on a system for pet food manufacturing, I realized that, while a large part of our current industry still hasn’t heard of this 4th industrial revolution, the combi42

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nation of data gathering and analysis, and machine learning would be a basis for improving the agility of production facilities.

Production agility, the name I put on this for the time being, isn’t new. In the works of Eliyahu Goldratt in the 80s, the ideas of reducing work in progress, eliminating bottlenecks and working with small batches were already used as a starting point for more cost-efficient production – followed by lean manufacturing in the 30 years after.

At the core lies the data that’s available in the factory, about all parts of production, and although in Goldratt’s initial

works, the role of computers and software in analyzing this data plays a crucial role, there are still a lot of production facilities that fail to make optimal use of it.

Often because the software only works with parts of the available data or because data analysis is reduced to human labor, performed by people using spreadsheets instead of dedicated, domain-specific and optimized analysis tools. This can be fixed, by introducing software solutions that combine flexible data gathering with proper data analysis tools and possibly also machine learning.

In essence, what I’m aiming at is using the data coming out of factories to analyze where bottlenecks or suboptimal processes can be found in the production and logistics chain – either in a single factory or across multiple factories. The results can then be fed to machine learning algorithms, which focus on optimizing what has been found.

The output of that can be any combination of process changes, machine or production configurations or even changes to the logistics processes in and around the factories.

Facilitating technologies

Within Smart Industry, a number of technologies or technology areas are identified that can help facilitate this. I want to introduce three that potentially play a major role in improving production agility.

First of all, the solution I have in mind will require the integration of factories and factory equipment with the industrial internet of things (IIoT). The IIoT is a network of industrial devices that are connected to the internet – either directly or through a so-called gateway. Having this connection in place allows data that’s available to or provided by these devices to be transferred over the internet so that it can be combined and fed to analysis applications.

These applications, connected to the internet, are a possible application of the sec-

ond technology area, the cloud. Cloud applications may live on dedicated servers owned by an organization or be hosted on a public platform like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. Running applications on these platforms can be done very cost-effectively, as it reduces or even eliminates the need for having to maintain own servers and data centers.

A third technology area, which can optionally also be hosted in the cloud, is machine learning. In this form of artificial intelligence, algorithms use data coming from machines to make the behavior of these machines more efficient and effective. A machine-learning algorithm could, for example, be used to change the order of production steps or the parameters of a single production step to improve the results.

The plan

I plan to set up a company that helps manufacturers apply these technologies to reap the benefits of Smart Industry. I’ve seen a lot of situations where having the appropriate data and analysis tools available would lead to faster and better solutions. We have a lot of IT and software running our world, but in manufacturing, there’s a lot to gain.

I aim to make two potential customers into lead customers and build a company around the solution we can develop

for them. The exact shape and technology choice of that solution aren’t entirely clear yet, but that will change rapidly over the coming months.

In doing this, I’m collaborating with partners in the Netherlands and Italy, also thanks to my connection to the Brainport High Tech Software Cluster and Intellimech.

These two organizations both have Industry 4.0 as a key focus, and being a liaison between the two allows me to work with a lot of people that can contribute to my plans.

This is the first article in a series that’s going to follow Angelo Hulshout’s idea from inception, through startup to what he aims to make a successful company. He’s writing this series for several reasons. First of all, because it forces him to record his progress. Second, to motivate others to pick up similar challenges, because our industry needs to make the step towards the Smart Industry future. Third, because he enjoys writing, giving him both pleasure and new ideas. The next article will focus on a specific use case that the new solution will address and may even include initial customer feedback.

Angelo Hulshout is an experienced independent software craftsman and a member of the Brainport High Tech Software Cluster.

Edited by Nieke Roos

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Software engineering

The Agile coach as a counselor – what we can learn from Star Trek In adopting Agile, organizations ride three waves. In the third wave, the Agile coach will evolve into a delivery coach or a counselor. The delivery coach is best compared with a business consultant. To get a better understanding of what the counselor role could look like, it seems we need to warp into the future.

Derk-Jan de Grood

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rganizations that start with Agile often have a strong focus on teams.

When the individual teams hit their stride, the focus shifts to inter-team collaboration. There’s a growing understanding that business agility and responsiveness are key to survive and stay ahead of the competition. To yield value, the work of single Agile teams should, therefore, be integrated and embedded in larger business processes.

In the second wave, the adoption of Agile is shifting from a single-team focus to a wider organizational approach. The role of the Agile coach changes from learning the team how to do their work to initializing cross-team collaboration and creating a focus on continuous delivery. Once teams have learned to plan and launch collectively built releases, the focus shifts from realizing technical products to business delivery.

This is the third wave. The performance dialogue will transition from a release focus to a focus on business impact.

If not done before, in the third wave, management will need to show Agile leadership. They’ll need to lead the way by explain-

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ing the strategic themes, defining the business aim of the next release and helping the product owners prioritize. They should also stimulate raising impediments when dependencies lead to delays or introduce inefficiencies. The leaders should take an active role in eliminating them and, if necessary, take it to a higher level in the organization.

Science fiction?

In the third wave, the Agile coach is working closely with the leaders. I foresee him evolving into a delivery coach or a counselor. The delivery coach is best compared with a business consultant. He has a strong focus on optimizing business value and will spot bottlenecks in the development process and reduce local optimizations that don’t work in an end-to-end value stream. Furthermore, the delivery coach tries to build quality into the software development lifecycle.

The Agile counselor doesn’t focus that much on the development process itself but aims to empower leadership. Although leadership coaching isn’t new in itself, there are few descriptions of this role. The best example I’ve found comes from the

Star Trek series. Are we talking science fiction here? I don’t know. But to get a better understanding of what the counselor role could look like, it seems we need to warp into the future.

According to the Star Trek Encyclopaedia, the mid-24th-century Starship and Starbase crews include a counselor. His responsibility is the mental well-being of the crew and civilian staff. The position is a vital one, warranting inclusion in the senior staff of the Federation flagship. The ship’s counselor also has a diplomatic role, advising the captain in first contacts and other situations. He has the power to relieve other officers and crewmembers if he feels that they’re unable to perform their duties effectively. This also includes the ship’s captain.

Intervention

In third-wave Agile organizations, the teams have great autonomy. They do their work, whether they’re coached or not. Even so, the Agile coach will walk the floor and actively sample their mood. Just like the ship counselor from Star Trek has a responsibility for the well-being of the crew,

the Agile coach has an interest in the wellbeing of the individual team members and the way they collaborate. When he senses a problem that may affect the sustainable delivery, predictability or the team’s continuous learning, he’ll take action. This can result in an intervention towards the team, the scrum master or the product owner, or action towards leadership.

Third-wave organization teams have been doing Agile for some time. Inefficiencies at the team level can be solved within the team, of course, but the Agile counselor will prefer to take it on with the leadership team to see how they can facilitate a sustainable solution. He has learned by now that it’s far more efficient to create awareness with leadership and ensure they take appropriate action to facilitate and guide the team than to solve it locally.

Inclusion in the leadership team enables the Agile coach to address these concerns and potential problems and he can even provide feedback to other leaders on their leadership style and the impact it has. He should facilitate a root cause analysis so that the leadership team gains insight into

the problem’s origin. The addressed concern may be rooted in the teams, in the enterprise organization but can also originate in the leadership team itself.

Uncharted grounds

I doubt whether the Agile coach should be able to relieve leaders from their duty like the Star Trek ship counselor can, but as an advisor, he should be empowered to advise the manager when one of his leaders or team members (deliberately or accidentally) endangers the organization’s purpose. The Agile coach should therefore have a trusted relationship with the manager and feel free to speak his mind. Even if this means being critical towards the leadership.

We’re not likely to encounter extraterrestrial life, but it’s not uncommon for organizations to walk uncharted grounds.

New business partners and suppliers might lead to first contacts and Agile coaches can advise the manager on their approach. Additionally, managers are likely to get into unknown situations. Recently, our organization had to take action against the coronavirus. I found myself teaming up

with management to plan extra department meetings to inform the employees about the measures that needed to be taken. We gave them a platform to share their thoughts and connect with their leadership team. I suddenly realized that by doing that, I was acting as a counselor – advising the captain in a new situation.

I don’t claim to be an organizational counselor, nor to fully understand the role.

But maybe few of us do. Since most organizations have yet to reach the third wave, the third-wave roles still lack a clear definition.

Nevertheless, I believe it’s worth discussing, as it will shape the Agile coach of tomorrow.

Derk-Jan de Grood works as an Agile transition coach for Squerist. As a consultant, he helps organizations with their Agile transformation and embedding quality. He’s an experienced trainer and he wrote several successful books.

In 2016, he published “Agile in the real world – Starting with Scrum.” On his blog djdegrood. wordpress.com, he shares his knowledge and experience for everyone to benefit.

Edited by Nieke Roos

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EVENTS AS A SERVICE Not having real-life events doesn’t mean you can’t stay in touch with your (potential) clients.

Hire Bits&Chips to organize your (online) event or webinar.

We’ll arrange the registration and hosting and provide online promotion to make sure your event becomes a success.

Contact us via events@techwatch.nl to receive more information about the possibilities and rates.

bits-chips.nl/events