Design Tools. How have they changed over and like 78 when you started? we're still doing the the tape on the film. Yeah we reason Ruby laughs and word lay out that way and then it treatable by hand. Doing it by hand.

Yeah! Blue little coupons you put down? Yes yeah, they're for the EIC for the dip packages and stuff. Yep and now it's all on a computer and it's It does well. Design Rule checking You put in all your constraints, all your safety spacing going to transmission lines, all your antacid ease for all your tracks and it checks everything. What have been the major advances in the development tool? There'd be one where you switch from the from the tape to a PC for laid out boards and then it happened in multiple steps.

Yeah, went from the Ruby lifts to where you. The one tool we had was you would draw everything in pencil and and use a giant digitizer right? You'd still throw it in with pencil but then you digitized it into the computer I Don't digitized them instead. Why? Cuz that was more efficient. at the time they didn't have the graphics technology because it was far advanced.

So now where you can your mouse? Yeah yeah and pop tracks in but one of the things I still to this day I'm still impressed by you. Take this tool and you'll have say twenty traces that are minimum spaced and you have to get a twenty first trace through and you want to go down the middle. Yeah, and you take your mouse and you drag it through the middle? and all and they move out of the way after this day. I Still get goose bumps.

Yeah, it's magic. It is magic. It still is because that used to take before. Oh yeah, we have to move this one yet.

this one with this one and then you have enough space and run it through. and then oh I Have to run a twenty second, you know? Auto Plow is cool. It's just yeah. Yeah, it's very cool.

What tools are you using internally to develop products like this? PCB Tools? What Simulation tools? What? So that was actually PC tools. One of the things that was interesting is we had different people in the company ten years ago using different tools, but 80% of the company was using a tool called Design Architect was from Enter Product Ok and that was a good tool, but it didn't service everybody's needs the best. So today we're on their newer updated tool called Expedition Yeah and Dxdesigner and now we've pretty much gotten everybody a hundred percent onto the same tool. And for someone like me whose job is to move designs from group to group, that's in diable because I can take a Pc design, a circuit design.

whatever it that someone didn't give it to someone else and it just works. We have a common core database for all our parts throughout the company with all the coupons for all the parts. If anybody sets it apart, anybody else can just grab that part and drop it on to a board on it. And the layout tool actually has the full corporate database right in the schematic capture so you can just sighs I Need a resistor point? You have sent five ppm and says well, here's the eight different parts, different power levels and you just grab it and drop it into your design.

so it's our corporate tool. The group is really, really amazing people and that's all part of your efficiency job time leaflet. In terms of, they are a static production. no, we grow I'm not directly involved I got no credit for the things they thank.

They've done that without any of my help. They've just done an amazing job. It's really one of the enablers for us to get more efficiency though. I appreciate the fact that it's there.

My job was to demand that we all use the same tool yep and get on board. and if there's a problem with you getting on board, I would help arrange training and help people convert over to it their designs because trying to move Jeff we're still. We have some older designs that I'm trying to leverage into new stuff and if it's in the old tool, we have to do a what we call a Gerber copy where they put the Gerber's for the port and then trace all the new trace. Oh no, that's but bet you have to do that right? Okay, simulation is still not common standard - we have different people like simulation tools we obviously saw so you leave it up to the individual designers.

Well, the tool of choice all depends on what work you're doing. We make one of we make the premiere RF design tool and you soft that all the arms nice use and it's used universally by all those folks. You couldn't really do their job without it because it includes the board layout phase a different board layout package for them because ah yes close to the characteristics of the RF are the board's part of the circuit and then the the rest of the the people use things like Cadence Allegro yeah, I was used. A lot of people frankly used Tina and Ltspice for simple stuff that's free and it's tied into the parts quickly.

so you're just trying to do a simple like filter or something like that, they'll just use that. One of the things that our our Power Group is actually really focused on as a tool called Sabre. By synopsis, there's a very very powerful mixed-signal simulator. They can do the digital feedback and the analog imagery.

Well, that's my awful it's a very expensive tool computer simulators and it's more complicated to learn how to use. But when you're starting to do some of this mixed signal stuff you really can't essentially can't do it. It would be impossible, or it just be so laborious that I've done it without it. But it's It's much more difficult, right? It's A.

there's a couple of their simplest I think it's one of the other big competitors. for that. there's MATLAB and Simulink. We do some stuff in MATLAB and Simulink as well.

A lot of people use that, but for savory, you can actually do the spice kind of things with digital feedback. Geez, that's how would you even begin to program something like that. I've enough. Yeah, that's crazy and it's about 20k of C.

All right I got here Wow Okay, the good news is because we have people all around the world. One seed serves multiple place. Oh, it does. I can't write.

So if as long said I use at the same time, usually you can. We have a big operation in Penang and Penang is 12 hours different from the US Yep. so depending if you're Colorado it's I guess 10 hours. But it works out perfect that we can buy one license.

You get to use that. Yeah, how? But how difficult is that time gap? Are you always flying there? Do you have I go about two, three, four times a year? Yep. and I spend I say four nights a week. Four nights a week? Yeah.

but I got to get up late. so I don't have to get up early, right? Not it. We try to minimize the number of people. Have to do that.

Yeah, because it is disruptive, not a tournament. I Enjoy it. I do a lot of trips over there and I run a couple projects over there for the low-cost power products. I Enjoyed very much the great group of people and I think for the longest time they were kind of treated like a little bit less.

I Don't think they ever deserve that, but you know that was our manufacturing menu. It's like it's it's the dirty part of engineering and the fact is there is critical for us to be effective is to make our cost goals against some of these new competitors coming in. there is strategically important is any part of our company. So you mentioned tools before.

You know we really didn't touch upon firmware and software tools. and one of the things that the company is really focusing on right now is standardizing on our software infrastructure, right? Our firmware infrastructure so we've been a window seat house for many years. I was gonna ask about see Microsoft is sunsetting windows right? you know? I Never heard of this before but evidently Microsoft will not let us buy a bunch of licenses and keep shipping after the deadline. They will not let us ship the product.

Wow! they will stop you from though we sue your app. We can't ship any product with you. Happens with no Ce6 after 2021 and we can't ship anything with Windows CE 7f Doesn't this have window seating? correct? Whoa. What are you gonna do I can't tell you what? Okay, if they trust us that we're gonna take care of well.

One thing is currently we can switch the windows C7 which is very similar. to say oh okay and we're looking at oh sorry so it's just a bit they don't discontinuing CA it's a version difference right now. When they came up with Windows CE would say 8, it's not called eight I think it's called something else, but I it's different enough that we're not probably gonna continue with that. We're gonna do something you'll have to.

Yeah, you think it's worthwhile to switch? Yes, Well, Microsoft does certain things really really well? Yeah, so for example, they know how to make a thumb drive driver so it moves with every thumb drive. They know how to duel and so it works really well. Yeah, But for us we found is that they're very inscrutable to get performance out of it. It's very large and bloated and we don't have enough control.

so we're looking at alternate autos that are more effective. Also, the processors today when you buy them don't come with Windows CE support. So that course is a very pretty penny to have support for Windows CE develop for these process. Oh, you have to get them developed if you want to use a so like.

For example, when you buy Windows support for a lot of them low-end embedded processors, it's many because we paid people I got mail and others to do it and then they get to sell to other people. haha. We paid all the claws. Wait.

Wow and now you get the benefit. No interesting. Oh wow. Whereas today, if you get a processor, if the Ultimate Linux Support for example, got it.

So the linux is one of the things that we're looking at very seriously. if there's a couple of other art sauces that we're looking at for low end products, but CC is we're looking at Sun setting that it's just. it's been a struggle all throughout. Like I said, there's been some good things and some not-so-good things.

One of the things that we get a lot of negative feedback on is boot time. Yes, yeah, it's important. Yeah, people accept it. but did I like it? Yep, and that's something Cee has been very difficult to get good boot up.

It's a differentiator when I'm reviewing a product. If I'm reviewing a new scope and it boots up in five seconds, that's a wow factor. Yeah, right. That's what you have.

Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. It's good to go. Yep, Yep.

Okay, so you are focusing. there is some focus on. There's absolutely some focus on that. In fact, this team when they developed this product, they took two of our best firmware guys and they went off in a corner for three months and they did a lot to optimize it because was over a minute.

It was first of all I wonder only ones I Think firmware releases know you and you have to do something. Yeah yeah, that took T of our top firmware people out like three months to do that. The house? Really not easy dude. they could have done more, but it would require even more invasive change to the code which would have raised a lot of risk.

You can do what's called a hibernate mode and you basically take where. the thing was that when you turn it off, copy it on and reboot it like a little app can give us. but Microsoft doesn't make it easy. interesting with Linux Do you use an industry build or do you find that you just have to maintain your own branch of it or something like that? So since we're not, we don't have any products out yet? I Can't go in 9 but if you had to if you had to, would always.

do you want somebody who's gonna be able to support that product and make sure that they take care of their part? And also there's some issues with licensing that you really need them to do that. Ah, Linux has got some strange copy issues with. We have to be very careful. All right.

interesting because open-source code can be terrifying. You may have to publish all your code. yeah, your internal code including your code including the product code. every line of the product code.

We're not doing that right now, but there have been a very famous situations. One of the most famous was Linksys made a router Yeah, these are 950 energy and they used open source Linux and they didn't realize that they had to publish it after it came out. And then they have forced to release all their internal code and several people have made pretty good money coming up with modifications. Yes, yeah.

Open Wrt. Yeah, that's right. It runs on that particular way and then it got so popular that they figured out well we'll make up Wrt54g n it so they could do that. They'd turn this a bad situation into an actual product, right? So Linux has got a lot of challenges with it.

That way. there are ways through the forest so to speak. it's got its own eggs. I mean I don't think we're gonna see quite the solidity of land and USB that? Microsoft They do more LAN and USB than anybody in the world, right? Okay, because the PC is somebody out there.

It's gonna be a challenge to go into new code space. There's things that we're great and we're gonna have to make them better in this new solution. but there's other things that we're gonna get him to change. One of the questions on the forum and very good one back in the old days when we were boys, you used to get schematics.

mmm annuals. when did that trend happening and why? Well the biggest reason it happened was because products weren't comparable repairable at the component level by most people. when we went from through-hole to surface mount was an idea, right? That's when it started to change. But the other place that started to change when we realized people were copying our products.

Okay, right and literally you could go in and down to the component level, troubleshoot in it. We spent a lot of time and a lot of money creating very complex troubleshooting trees. We used to do things like signature analysis for the metal ICS and you could repair a product with down to the part level. today with both grid arrays and fine pitch surface mount and and Rojas a compatible Sauter's It's the QF ends and things like that, You know the DF ends I should say where the leads are underneath the part.

It's very difficult unless you have exotic repair equipment to repair parts and we don't want to have to sell the parts there's you can't buy some of these parts. in love I'm in less than 20 weeks so but there's no obligation to sell the parts if you publish a schematic using well for our customers. We say it's supportable down for the component level. Yes, we have to help them repair it, but why can't you just go? Well Look, he's a schematic, but it's it's as is.

Or here's a part of a schematic. It's a Z. It's like we know supporting tender does that illegal thing. No, it's not a legal thing, it's a matter of creating a something we think is good for our customers.

Okay, we can just throwing those stuff out there. It hurts our business. It hurts our customers because they're not getting enough guidance to be able to repair the product correctly. Got it right? So you think it could reflect on your reputation if you gave them the schematic and then hands-off we won't have no support The product everywhere in the world.

We? yeah, we have supported in every just about every country in the world around the most supported products and tested measurement around the world. You know now we have to create those service values. We used to translate them into multiple languages. Yeah, okay, we had to support them.

So when someone had a question about the schematic they we had to answer the phone and those cost took away from creating great products. Got it? And so few people today. You know the reliability of our products is much higher - then it was 23 years ago. They don't fail us often and when they do fail, they don't have the facilities to repair them because it's much more difficult so we don't even repair our products when they come back.

In many case we swap out it. Well, it need to be bullets. What kind of thing? It's something everybody's changed. but you know a lot of people complain about it because they want to repair it themselves.

and then I don't think they realize how much more difficult that actually is to do than they think? Yeah. and for the small signal analog, if you're a trained analog engineer, I've repaired stuff without schematics. You just look around or even shotgun a few parts. you can fix it, but some of the parts that are very specific you know selected for us and we would have to sell them for you to repair a few parts.

and that's very expensive to do and maintain for the huge volume of products that we make. What about? Just like theory of operation block diagrams, then smaller than some, you still providing some of that product to product. We do provide some theory of operation where we feel it benefits us in terms of creating a brand benefit, explaining how we do things differently and it's good. It helps, but we we're not there to help them.

We do get requests, for example, from a lot of our military customers. demand we provide support for repair interface because they don't want that. Not of course to leave their factor facility and we try to work with those people specifically and we will actually provide internal documentation to key customers. Interns make those kind of demands and we feel it's the right thing to do.

but for general, we don't do it. How do you feel about the clones of your products? I Mean if you look at this, there's almost an exact clone from see look the the user interface. Like, not so much the performance of it, but well, they try and match, but the user interface is almost identical. Yes, what do you guys think about that dear.

just laugh and go fat. No, we don't know if we're very upset. Oh, there's a lot of money in time can create this thing. A lot of the money and time today is in the user interface because it's one of the differentiators.

and when someone copies that, they're stealing, right? Hey, yeah, and we've learned. It's taken us a while to figure this out. But there's mention is the Simon today at a breakfast, there are legal ways for us to protect ourselves. What's called a design patent? Yeah, we're starting to get us there more.

you are. Yes, a lot of people will be going. Design Patents Design patents protect the way the front panel will. Yes, the way the product looks and feels.

and they're actually creative in China where a lot of the copying is going on and they're very easy to prosecute. Okay, if they're easy to prosecute in China In China Yes, really? I Thought it was the opposite. No, China is recognized that in order to become a world-class economy, they've got to protect this island. We do copyright patents we have for a long time, but you haven't done in really design patent.

so when you did this, you didn't. We did have a design pad on this. We didn't figure out that design patents were a valid thing to do until about four years ago. Well, okay, so it's a modern phenomenon really? Well, Oh, you just our legal department? Yeah, didn't want to do them because it wasn't effective until China passed a new design patent code on it that they're now in coercing.

It's much less expensive to get a design patent that a regular patent, both the cost of creating it and the cost of submitting it. Really, it's significantly different. Well, for a regular patent, you have to write a complete treatise on how the thing works right enough so someone else can easily copy it. Yep, and one of the challenges are real with a lot of real.

What they call the the other type of patent you're more familiar with is that you're providing a primer for people - yes, top of your design. And so therefore, one of the other challenges with a regular dozen regular patent is what's called observability. If you can't observe and know for sure that they use that you can't patent it because what you're doing is teaching them how to copy you and you can't stop them because you can't prove it. You can't say I think you're stealing my thing.

but I can't prove it. So we've actually we do patents where it's we. It's fundamental to the feature of the product, but in many cases we don't. So for example, our new true form function generators use some proprietary technology.

We could not patent that because we would have shown you how to do it. Got it? So you decide to keep it internal, it's effectively like a trade secret. Yeah, yeah, okay, but there's just the opposite of a patent. You you IVA patent it or you trade secret or you open it.

There's actually a few other things out there for us, but the trade secret technically is supposed to be kept hidden even from people inside your company. Oh okay, it's ready to swim in it for Coca-cola That's right. it has to be limited. Who can get access to it? Okay, cause for a legal reason, I'll just be good.

Oh Interesting. Otherwise, it's common knowledge throughout your company how to do it. Then someone could leave and somebody leaves and takes it with you. And legally, that's okay.

that's okay. Wow Okay, but if you said legally if you limited it within a certain team and that person never worked in that team and they went somewhere else and somehow they got that knowledge that's deemed to be stealing figured out another way you can use it. Yeah, all right, and eventually all trade secrets eventually know everybody knows what Cokes made out of. Now they they hook up at one of these pieces of a it's got cloves and cinnamon and sugar and all those things you know it's not that hard to copy anymore.

Um, that's the nature of trade secrets. They slowly leak out. Yeah, but all we're looking for is to keep people from rapidly copying our products. No, you're after we we come out with a product.

They've got an identical one. and of course our customers think we only end it from them right? Yes, yes it's the exact opposite. They're stealing from us and they think we're yep, we're cheating and copying it. you know from them.

which is nothing what have happened. but I have to ask about the Rygel thing. You guys were right. I were the OEM for your desk ops.

sorry original design manufacture right? right? But you guys helped them technically I heard. So the rumor goes and in terms of design and manufacturing, you helped them and have do you feel like you've created a monster or what a monster competitor? Well I can only say that that relationship is no longer, it's it's no longer existent record. that's all. I cry.

But okay. so I Do you think in retrospect we all agree that we shouldn't have done that? We did and right other plans since then to do things in a different way, a better way. And we're trying to a different model to work with. Odion's that's more effective, right? So you do work with Oh Diems, What What products and can you oblige? - I'm not obliged to say, but some of them may not be.

we work with ODMs because it's a way for us to get more products of course. Yeah, and in some cases they may have unique manufacturing technology for example, for ultra low cost and it allows us to expand our scope and get into more markets more quickly. And that's something that sometimes more important and doing it ourselves of course. Would you look at buying those companies I Don't do you guys buy Me have these these days.

we are growing our acquisition process I Was telling Simon this morning we used to have rules when you're part of Agilent that we wouldn't buy anything. It's more than a half a billion dollars in terms of monetary figure and the reason that was was because the cost of integrating the company in is mistakes. Not well. it doesn't matter if it's big or small, you still have to take whatever system they have encountered into your system.

so it cost almost as much to take a small company and bring it in as it does a big company. Yeah. And then when we realized that what that was doing and our competitors were not following this plan, they were buying smaller companies. huh? The we started to put much more demands on our acquisition team to be more effective and integrating into their these companies that line down because in some cases small companies have incredible technology and you don't want to owe em it from them, you want to own them and keep it for yourself.

So we've purchased, you know Ixia We which is a big company we've bought signifies small company and where they have a key technology. we need to be successful quickly. It's a great way to get going, but it puts pressure on your acquisition team to integrate their HR they're there the finance model and their benefits packages that you know. in the case of Vixia we bought XE and we're rapidly like moving people from facility to facility to cut our overhead costs without disrupting their development process.

And that's something that we're very proud that that transition is going much faster than it would have when we were part of. Agilent. For example, Agilent they said it would take a year to two. Something like C I Think they said that we're taking here now it's taking nine months.

Okay, so you're moving in towards a position where you can more cheaper and more readily acquire companies that have cool tech. Which you guys, it's more sustainable. So now we're a pure TNM Play with the TNM someone develops a new technology You've got to pay attention to that. You know to be able to bring it into the fold.

and in some cases is a big company like XE o Who is? You know, the world leader in network security and all of our products have land in them. And you heard about the shutdown in the US and where someone took over all the webcams? Yes, yeah, the webcam. We can't tell our customers, We take care of that. So Exci is a big part of our strategy.

You have the world's best internet security in all of our products and cell internet security technology. That's interesting because you like when you're motivated, become machine fare, right? Yeah, not that there's huge volume these like there is webcams, but still. yeah. But it's also if you look at the date of the measurement data, it's inside these things.

They don't want that stuff that's proprietary. That's company for Pi. If I had my multimeter and it was, someone was spying inside, right? They could tell how many products you manufacture today. for example, if they could crack that and they don't want that information getting out.

Yeah, and there's a lot more to it too. I'm just going forward. Internet Security As the Internet of Things becomes pervasive, it's gonna be more and more important to test Internet security as well. Yep, we're paying attention.

Is there a point to buying a company and leaving them alone? We've done that as well. You've done that less less commonly. We're looking for a strategic fit. Yeah, it makes sense to make us a stronger overall company.

I Mean we're not looking just to bring the cash that they make and it's not a kind of acquisition. We do very all right. really looking for things that enhance our overall company that fit with everything else. so leaving them alone.

You know, if it's a segment of the market that's really independent, but we need to have an access to it, We might do that. but I haven't seen that you.