Thank you very much for taking the time to educate me on this.
I'm a little embarrassed, because I had no idea what has taken place
regarding this work. Its very easy to spew out sarcasm when you are just
waiting for results. All I really heard was basically that "the IPC is
finally fixing the chart". I generally think of "the IPC" as an entity or a
corporation, and forget about the people behind the scenes. I feel like I
owe Mike an apology, so please forward this to him if you know his address.
I have never seen him on any of the forums I frequent.
Regarding your other question, my commute is so far away that I bought an
RV (I live near Peoria but work in Chicago), stay here in the parking lot
during the week and go home on the weekends. That means, from Monday night
through Thursday night I sit here at the computer until around midnight
working on my hobbies and spewing sarcasm <grin>. I would love to help out,
but don't know what to do. I'm a pretty good technical writer, and an
excellent proofreader, a small amount of web design experience, and almost
20 years of circuit board design experience. I have a lot of things going
right now, but could easily find a few hours a month to help out. So save
this email address and please keep me in mind, ok?
Thanks again,
Jack C. Olson
Circuit Board Designer
Caterpillar, Inc.
(630) 754-2431
p.s. I know IPC people are reluctant (or even forbidden?) to post in their
own forums, but this is a story that should be told. I really want to CC:
the group. (I'll cheerfully apologize later if it was unwise).
"John Perry"
<[log in to unmask]
g>
To
04/11/2005 12:28 To
PM <[log in to unmask]>
cc
Subject
IPC-2152 Current Carrying Capacity
Standard Effort
Caterpillar: Confidential Green Retain Until: 05/11/2005
Retention Category: G90 -
General
Matters/Administration
Hello Jack,
I saw your e-mail on the DC forum regarding IPC-2152 and Mike Jouppi and
feel that it is important to clarify what has happened and where we are
with the document and what can be done to get it published.
There was considerable interest among the industry in the IPC-2152 back in
2001 and 2002. In fact, we had quite a few people come to the standards
meetings for the document at the spring and fall IPC conferences. The
problem that arose was that most of those folks were just interested in
finding out when the document was going to become available, and not in
participating in the development process of IPC-2152.
That is not to say that there were not some who offered their time, but
even in those cases, we’d see them at one meeting and then never again.
Each successive standards meeting for this task group had new people and
we’ve never been able to establish a strong, dedicated quorum of
individuals. As time went on, the number of people attending the meetings
diminished – evidence of those who realized the document was not on the
immediate horizon for release.
And so in reality, the IPC 1-10b Current Carrying Capacity Task Group
became a one-man show I call “The Mike Jouppi Show”. Mike left his
employer a few years back to embark on this project, and to date has
invested considerable personal expense into the testing phase of the
project to validate the new charts and to develop supporting software. He
attempted to obtain grants and government funding for the testing but was
always turned away. He has gone so far as to dip into his personal
retirement savings to keep this project afloat – I don’t know many industry
volunteers that would go that far for the sake of a standard that few
others were interested and in which, willing to assist.
Consequently he developed a website to educate people on the need to build
new charts for current carrying capacity. He also developed the trace
calculator tool which, aside from its main goal of providing eventual
support for the IPC-2152, could help him recoup a small portion of his
personal expenses.
Presently we have found a group of roughly 4-5 designers who have offered
to stay the course and help Mike in evaluating draft revisions, and
although we are grateful for their offer of support, Mike needs help with
writing the revisions. We need more industry help to get the document
completed. I would like to invite you into the IPC 1-10b Current Carrying
Capacity Task Group as we work to get the document published. Are you
interested?
I believe it is also important for those on the Designers Council forum to
understand that Mike’s role in this is not to turn the standards process
into a money-making machine for himself. The truth is far from that. In
reality, Mike is pushing forward with this because he strongly believes it
is important to the industry, even with the understanding that when all is
said and done, he will be financially in the red. I think that’s a
tremendous sacrifice and people need to be aware of that.
<snip>
Thanks,
John Perry
Technical Project Manager
IPC
|
