A number of industry trends are shaping the requirements for IC and electronic equipment design. The density and complexity of circuit technologies have increased to a point where design cannot be performed without EDA tools. The availability of completely designed and verified reusable design components has become a major impediment to meeting required design productivity goals. Design reuse is moving down the package hierarchy to include chip design in addition to PCA design. At the same time, the widespread use of Internet and Worldwide Web technologies offer component suppliers global access to customers, and component users access to suppliers, worldwide. To realize the full potential of modern technology, it is necessary that a level of consistency be defined and used to represent component information. Standard formats for datasheets and standard terminology within datasheets aids customers in their analysis and value-comparison of components from multiple suppliers. Additional...
Donald R. Cottrell