Shared Resources eyes low-end PCB software

Electronic News, April 27, 1992 by Daniel Holden

SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- Shared Resources Inc., a multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) design house which also sells its own Crystal software for high-speed and high-end PCB design, may soon jump into the wildly competitive low-end PCB design software arena. But Lee W. Ritchey, vice president of engineering and marketing at Shared Resources said the company would only enter that market with a partner.

"We wouldn't mind selling into the lower-end systems market," said Mr. Ritchey. "But that would mean we would have to compete with people like Valid (now a part of Cadence Design Systems).

"As it is, CAD (computer-aided-design) managers prefer, if they can, to solve their problems with name-brand products. We would like to sell our tools in volume, but we would like have to do that with a partner."

Asked if the company has a particular partner in mind, Mr. Ritchey replied "None that we can discuss." He hinted that a prime target would be Mentor Graphics Corp.

A spokeswoman for Mentor said, however, tha the company does not have an active relationship with Shared Resources at this time. The spokeswoman noted that Mentor recently signed an agreement to incorporate Cooper & Chyan Technology's shaped-based autorouting tools into Mentor's Falcon framework toolset. Cooper & Chyan tools for standard and high-speed board design will be available in the second and third quarters, respectively.

Whether, the partner is Mentor or another electronic design automation (EDA) company, Shared's goal is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Founded in 1982, it sells its PCB design software primarily to supercomputer makers, including Cray Research, Unisys, Multiflow and Automated Designs Inc. Shared Resources specilizes in software which routes high-speed PCBs to emitter-coupled logic (ECL) design rules.

Complying with a request from an early customer, the company backed into the business of designing customs PCBs for clients. It now includes among its design service bureau customers such companies as Digital Equipment, MIPS Computer Systems, KLA Instruments, Silicon Graphics, AT&T/Bell Laboratories, Sun Microsystems and Credence Systems Corp.

Mr. Ritchey said Shared sees great potential for a broad market in the computer industry's incessant drive for high-speed designs.

"Its a little easier to consider (entering the lower-end market) now because most companies are being confronted with speed problems," said Mr. Ritchey, adding that he is aware of several cases where the speed requirements were simply too much for name-brand PCB software.

Higher speeds generally translate into wider buses, said, Mr. Ritchey, and that is what confounds most PCB software.

"We've gone from 8-bit buses to 64-bit buses. Some designs use 128-bit buses. Cray's supercomputer uses a 256-bit bus.

"That's the biggest thing," he said. "They got faster and wider."

The wider buses and higher speeds mean that more of the wires in at design are critical, said Mr. Ritchey. "In some designs, only 2 percent of the wires are not critical.

"It has all to do with why the PCB industry is in trouble. The volume of boards that need to get made has dropped four or five to one, but the boards that remain are all nasty mulitlayers that are stressing everybody.

"The industry is still in transition," he said. "We're not done yet. If you watch the integration on semiconductor devices, you can infer from that the effects on the board level."

For example, Mr. Ritchey said, the pincounts on Intel's microprocessors are increasing at an astonishing rate. "The 486 has 168 pins, but the 586 will have more than 400 pins," he said.