My blog is the world's best!

Wow! I am overwhelmed!

This morning, when I stepped into the office, I'd no clue what lay ahead. This blog had been recently nominated in Electronics Weekly.com's first ever Electronics Blog Awards 2008, under the Electronic Hardware category.

My blog was declared the winner in this category!.

Several friends and well wishers have requested me to post an image about the winner's announcement page, so here it is!All of the other bloggers in the list are equally worthy, and they are all winners. My heartiest congratulations to all of my fellow nominees. I haven't even met anyone of you, ever! Hope I can, some time soon.

I've always maintained that love writing (or blogging) about things that are close to my heart. Semicon and telecom are prime in that category, two topics that I am really very fond of.

My blog -- well, it all started as a regular affair. There are a whole lot of great bloggers out there, who also write on similar topics. I was and am just one among those. Nor was and am I ever looking for traffic, etc., as it is my contention that people will only stop by and read your blog post or article IF there's something of interest to them. So, I was my only reader ;) I thought!

I didn't even realize that so many people would be reading my blog posts. Well, things changed somewhere, I don't know how. Wish I could thank everyone personally!

Thanks, dear friends, for stopping by my blog occasionally. I just don't have words to express myself.

All I can say is a big thank you to Electronics Weekly for picking up my blog. Thanks to the person who nominated my blog, as I've no idea who nominated it. Thanks also to Google for creating the Blogspot platform so that people like me can blog. Many thanks to all of those friends, well wishers and readers who voted for me. Hope you all find my blog useful.

Dear friends and readers, please keep those suggestions coming so I can strive to improve myself even further over time.

P.S. A former colleague and close friend, Debashish Choudhury, has also added a link on Global SMT site. The link is given here. Thanks Debu for the honor! ;)

Cybermedia/CIOL, very kindly, posted a news release announcing my victory. Many thanks for to CIOL and Cybermedia.

Later, in the evening, Pradeep Gupta, CyberMedia's managing director, sent out an email to the entire company, announcing my win. Thanks a lot for this very nice and touching gesture, Sir.

Finally, Electronics Weekly sent a mail to me saying: "You were the clear winner in your category, so congratulations! If I may, I'll send you a 'Blog Awards, Winner' badge for your blog, to commemorate the victory!" Thanks to Electronics Weekly again!

Take care of thermal distribution for higher-layer PCBs

This is an extension to an earlier piece on the subject. During my various meetings in Hong Kong, I found Johnny Keung, deputy general manager, Circuitone, as a very good resource for discussing PCB services.

He described that immersion tin was economical, complied with RoHS, could replace immersion gold, and go fine line width. Circuitone offers 4µx4µ line width. As for spacing, it can go down to 3µ spacing.

The board size can be limited by equipment. Circuitone has equipment that handles 24x24inch board sizes. It can also offer 0.003” line width (3µx3µ) for high-density PCBs in large volumes. It offers minimum hole-width of 0.2mm, and plans to offer 0.1mm hole-width by Q4-07. This is indeed significant.

There had been some reports in the trade press regarding some Mainland Chinese PCB fabricators offeing 20- and even 40-layer PCBs.

Keung said there were two benchmarks. One, switching from double-sided to four layers, and two, switching from four layers to six layers.

He pointed out that Circuitone could use technology from six layers up to 20 layers. If it went beyond 20 layers, for example, 22 layers, there may be difficulties with thermal distribution within the board.

As I understand from our discussions, for up to 20 layers or so, heat distribution was on the top layer of the PCB, while distribution across middle layer could be uneven. Layers at the bottom could experience higher heat transfer than those in the middle.

Even PCB pressing is done in two stages: one, increase heat so the bonding sheet started to melt, and two, if temperature kept increasing, the glue was transformed into solid. This was the final curing stage.

Commenting on 40-layer PCBs, Keung commented that those boards at the outer layer would likely start melting, and those at the core layer would be in solidstate. When heat was being transferred into core layer, the evenness of distribution changed. The outer layer would remain in solidstate as well. So, expansion/contraction could get uneven, and registration could be a big challenge.

Fabricators should definitely look into this aspect, before designing higher-layer PCBs. I believe, some research work has been done by PCB makers to develop higher-layer PCBs. We discussed the yield rate earlier. That has to rise.

Make room for Internet radios

During one of my trips to San Po Kong, near Diamond Hill, in Hong Kong, I had the pleasure of meeting Hip Shing Electronics, who were introducing the Internet radio. I remember, my good friend, Willy Cheng, asking me to meet this company, and I'm glad that I did.

Hip Shing has focused attention on producing Internet radios. One of its models is an Internet radio with WiFi. A desktop receiver picks up the Internet radio station through WiFi and streams the music over the radio.

Do note that Internet radios and DAB radios have different markets, in the sense that Internet radios can be virtually used anywhere!

During our meeting, the executive at Hip Shing was playing for me Paris Hilton’s number "Stars Are Blind, over the Internet radio, after having accessed the audio file over the office network.

There are currently over 10,000 Internet radio stations and growing. Hip Shing’s executive said that users could stream MP3/WMA files via their own network using the Internet radio. The files buffer and then play back.

The Internet radio supports MP3/WMA/Real/AAC formats. It supports all major Internet encryption and decoding formats as well. I believe, it would be just a while when these radios come with features to support video playback. And that would be great!

Hip Shing is using Receiva’s solution for the Internet radio. The WiFi solution has been sourced from Taiwan. It is 802.11a/b/g compatible, and can stream over 6,000 Internet radio stations. Drivers for speakers are sourced from the Mainland.

The Internet radio featured five preset Internet radio stations, though Hip Shing can offer up to 10 preset stations. It had 4Wx1 speaker output power and a four-line LCD. Hip Shing was scheduled to add FM capability as well during Q1-2007.

Hip Shing was also planning to launch an Internet radio adapter and a micro system. It can be connected via WiFi. The Internet radio adapter would not have a speaker. The solution for this product has been sourced from Receiva. Hip Shing was scheduled to launch this product by end of November 2006.

Another supplier in Shatin, Hong Kong, A-Team, also came up with an Internet radio. A-Team's Internet radio also uses Receiva’s solution and plays all key audio formats. It will be sold in Europe, most likely.

I would like to see some updates from readers on this segment. I don't think this product has reached India. Would be interesting to see how it develops here.