Evaluation Engineering - 6

@TWITTER.COM/EE_ENGINEERS
APAULTRE@ENDEAVORB2B.COM

HOW EXACT ARE THE LINES
ON YOUR RULER?
Let me start by saying how pleased and
proud I am to be joining the team here
at Endeavor Business Media as the Editor of
Evaluation Engineering. In one sense, you can
call me the features editor, as I will be primarily responsible for obtaining and editing the
contributions to this great publication. Rick
Nelson will continue to handle our Special
Reports as contributing technical editor, and
managing editor Ken Cormier will still handle
EE's press releases.
Evaluation Engineering is not just the name
of our publication, but also a way to describe
the industry space we serve. In one sense,
evaluation is the most critical of all engineering disciplines, as one cannot address an
application space without examining it first.
One cannot create a design without knowing the physical, mechanical, and electrical
parameters of the system being served, and
the solution you wish to create.
There is no precision without feedback. In
every endeavor, regardless of the nature of the
task at hand, accuracy is paramount. Even
the basic act of eating cannot be performed if
you miss your mouth with the fork. There are
some who claim "eyeballing" is an accurate
means of calibrating something, not recognizing their trained experience in determining
a situation is a validation of the philosophy
involved.
Once you establish that measuring things
is important, the focus then shifts to the accuracy of the measurement. Information is
useless unless it is placed in the proper context, and can be trusted in its stated precision.
You may only have lines every foot on your
ruler, but if they are exactly placed, that ruler
is more useful than one that may have more
regular, but less accurate, markings. Unless
you can trust the precision of your measurement, it is almost useless.
This applies to all aspects of design. One
of the new paradigms is the convergent nature of technology today. There is almost no

solution in existence today that doesn't integrate multiple core technologies. with mechanical, electrical, and electronic systems
being used in concert. Every aspect of a design
is critical today, with no wiggle room in any
aspect. Efficiency, power density, form factor, and solution footprint are all important
factors today.
What this means to the engineering community is that all parameters are important,
and that means all parameters must be measured. This is one of the greatest pressures
on the engineer, in that whatever measurement technology and methodology you use,
it has to be better than the system(s) you are
testing. In order to measure the accuracy of
anything, you have to have a greater resolution than the device being measured. The
lines on your ruler have to be closer together
and more precisely placed than the lines on
the ruler you are validating. This means the
test community has to stay at least one step
ahead of the design engineer.
In the real world, that means you have to
have tighter tolerances, faster capture, larger
samples, and more memory than anything
you expect to encounter in your endeavors.
Lasers, mechanical and electronic probes,
and other measurement systems must operate and perform at optimum to stay ahead
of the rapidly-developing technologies that
are creating the creative disruptive design
environment we face today.
Looking forward, I am very much looking
forward to continuing to serve the engineering community as part of the team here at
Evaluation Engineering. We welcome your
input, contributions, and ideas, and extend
a warm welcome to anyone who wants to participate in our community. We will continue
to serve you to the best of our ability, and I
take pleasure and pride in my role in helping
achieve that goal.
Alix Paultre,
Editor

59.8 BILLION
Global semiconductor
equipment sales in 2019

7%
Decrease in semiconductor
equipment sales over 2018
Source: SEMI

-4%
Forecast for global IC
market growth for 2020

3%
Decline for total IC unit
shipments this year
Source: IC Insights

35.4 BILLION
Worldwide sales of semiconductors in February 2020

2.4%
Year-over-year decrease
in semiconductor sales
in February 2020
Source: SIA

EVALUATION ENGINEERING MAY/JUNE 2020

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Evaluation Engineering

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