XrossTalk Magazine

I stumbled across a new book about BGA breakout and routing on EDA DesignLine and it looks really interesting. If you follow the EDA DesignLine article link you can download a preview of the book to get a feel for it. It has lots of graphics which I think makes the book stand out. The author, Charles Pfeil, is an engineering director at Mentor Graphics and it looks like they are publishing the book themselves (hence the cheap under forty dollar price tag). Reading through the sample chapter on HDI stackups I really like the practical informatoin given; it seemed more like a designer guide than a general theory book which I think a lot of people will like. I'll probably pick up a copy myself and maybe I will try and get an interview with the author for the next issue of XrossTalk. Anyone else revewied the book yet?

Cadence just had their Q2 earnings call and the news was not good. They lowered their outlook and are changing their licensing mix to try and get more revenue. However, they are still going after Mentor Graphics and bought more shares uping thier ownership of Mentor to 4.7%.

I recently read Gary Smith's piece on the Cadence and Mentor merger and it was pretty interesting. I think the backstory of consolidation in the PCB market was very telling:

(photo by jondavidoakley)

Jag Bolaria of the Linley Group has an interesting article at Programmable Logic DesignLines website about the emerging role of the latest PCI Express interconnect standard. From the chart above it looks like they are forecasting almost double growth in two to three years for PCI Express bridges and switches. It appears that a lot of the growth will be coming from the embedded and communications market.

I've worked on products for this market segment (bridges and switches) and the competition is brutal.

With the recent announcement that Cadence wants to buy out Mentor Graphics the whole EDA industry is in a frenzy. What could a Cadence-Mentor merger mean for hardware engineers that do PCB design? And does Synopsys have an ace up it's sleeve?