Printed Circuit Design & Fab

PEACHTREE CITY, GA – JULY 6, 2026 – The Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA) today announced that AJ Cooper, CEO and cofounder of Itera, will keynote PCB West 2026. His keynote, “The Physical AI Boom Starts at the Circuit Level,” takes place Sept. 30 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Itera, a new deep tech startup, has developed the world’s first “fluid” circuit board, which can rewire itself in real time.

Breaking the 100GHz Barrier Breaking through the 100GHz bandwidth limit for coplanar waveguide design. READ MORE... ICT vs. Flying Probe Effective factory testing is essential for delivering reliable products. READ MORE... PCB Stackups: A Brief History The evolution of layer stackups. READ MORE... Using Ultra HDI Where Needed Applying UHDI only where density and performance demands require it. READ MORE... How to Validate PCB Backdrilling How to specify and monitor PCB backdrill requirements. READ MORE...

BANNOCKBURN, IL -- North American electronics manufacturing services (EMS) companies continued to post steady demand in May, with the Global Electronics Association reporting a book-to-bill ratio of 1.36. EMS shipments increased 5.2% year-over-year and 3.4% from April, while year-to-date shipments were up 9.6% compared to the same period in 2025. Bookings rose 28.7% from May 2025 but declined 42.9% from the previous month, with year-to-date bookings remaining 3.8% above last year's pace.

BANNOCKBURN, IL -- North American PCB demand remained strong in May, with the Global Electronics Association reporting a book-to-bill ratio of 1.60 as AI-related investment continued to drive orders. PCB shipments rose 11.9% year-over-year and 10.1% from April, while year-to-date shipments increased 12.8% over the same period in 2025. Bookings climbed 102.8% compared to May 2025 and were up 22.3% sequentially, pushing year-to-date bookings 28.6% higher year-over-year.

Thousands of attendees gathered at ECTC to explore the latest advances in advanced packaging, AI-driven design, heterogeneous integration and thermal management. More than 2,700 attendees conversed about the latest developments in packaging and assembly at the IEEE Electronics Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) in May in Orlando.

Applying UHDI only where density and performance demands require it can reduce layer counts, improve yields and lower costs without sacrificing electrical performance. One of the most common assumptions PCB designers make when investigating ultra HDI (UHDI) technology is that every layer must be built with ultra-fine geometries using semi-additive processing (SAP) or modified semi-additive (mSAP) processing. In practice, most UHDI stackups are a combination of conventional layers and UHDI layers.

High-performance computing has moved out of its niche to become a mainstream requirement and continues to rely on human skills to deliver its optimum potential. Historically, supercomputing has been a niche discipline, the preserve of rare and almost mythical machines embodying esoteric design principles. Only a tiny number of organizations, such as national laboratories, top-tier businesses and elite universities, had workloads that justified using them.

The evolution of layer stackups, from simple constructions to sequential lamination. Stackup, the buildup of PCBs, has grown in importance over the past few decades. In the early days PCBs functioned primarily as interconnect, and the need for stackup was minimal. On a single-sided PCB, the “stack” is simply one piece of clad material. Even the board thickness was rarely a consideration unless it had to plug into an edge connector.

Lauren Waslick and Kristen Aguiar discuss mentorship, visibility and the career few people know exists. One of the PCB design community’s greatest talents is hiding in plain sight. Ask a room full of high school students what they want to be when they grow up and you'll hear doctor, lawyer, engineer, teacher, maybe even influencer if we're being honest. In my own case, I wanted to be a writer. I simply failed to anticipate that the characters would be engineers.

How to specify, validate and monitor PCB backdrill requirements during NPI and production. As PCB designs incorporate higher-speed signals, and reducing via stubs becomes critical to function, backdrilling is often treated as a simple requirement added to the fabrication drawing. Designers trust the PCB fabricator's process to meet their stub requirement, but validation of this critical requirement is often overlooked.