BY PATRICK McLAUGHLIN
A new online tool from Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas (www.avnet.com) aims to give design engineers just-in-time technical expertise that will streamline access to hardware evaluation kits, development tools, and reference designs. The company says this access will speed the electronic application design and development cycle.
Available in beta form since May, the Avnet Design Resource Center (DRC) was officially unveiled as a fully functional tool in July. “Avnet Electronics Marketing supports our customers by making investments in areas where they ask for help-such as speeding development time by helping them stay up-to-date on a wide variety of technologies for use in their designs,” says Jeff Ittel, senior vice president.
The tool, available at www.em.avnet.com/drc, lets you purchase evaluation kits and provides access to reference designs online, including supporting tools and documentation developed by Avnet and its suppliers. Those supporting tools include product briefs, user and programming guides, schematics, bills of materials, errata, application notes, reference designs, and test files.
Pat Wastal, the company’s senior vice president of interconnect, passive, and electromechanical (IP&E) components, says that customers no longer have to hop from site to site in order to get the documentation they need to effectively build a printed circuit board (PCB), including its connectors. Because it is offered by a distributor with a breadth and depth of product offerings, the DRC lets its users look at a wide array of suppliers.
Executives say the DRC complements other design chain services the company offers. “Engineering and design chain services are at the core of what we do,” says Rafael Cruz, vice president of design services. “In distribution, design expertise is a differentiator.” Other services complementary to the DRC include engineering, design tools, technical resources, and education (including Web-based seminars, technical sessions, and workshops).
The tool launched with information from 11 suppliers: AMCC, Atmel, Broadcom, Freescale Semiconductor, Intel, Lattice Semiconductor, National Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Silicon Laboratories, Texas Instruments, and Xilinx.
Despite the obvious semiconductor slant to the list of suppliers in the DRC’s original lineup, Avnet’s Wastal says connectors currently play a crucial role in PCB design, and will continue to do so. Summing up the overall state of the connector market, he says, “It has been a dynamic year for connectors. Demand worldwide has grown, and that combined with natural-resource shortages have sent prices increasing. Those dynamics also have invited knockoffs, which has raised quality issues.”
Wastal continues, “Avnet is able to provide a link between the IP&E and the semiconductor side,” he continues. Today, National Semiconductor is working with Molex to ensure they are going down the same technological path.”
As circuit technology continues to evolve and the speed with which information travels continually increases, connectivity technology comes under more focus as a potential bottleneck for that information leaving the board. Collaborations like the one Wastal described between National and Molex, as well as other, similar efforts between semiconductor and connector providers, puts connectivity technology at the heart of PCB efficiency.
