Shape-Based Router Inventor Finch Passes Away

摘要

Alan C. Finch, the father of the shape-based autorouter, passed away on Dec. 16. In 1985, Finch, with coauthors K.J. Mackenzie, GJ. Balsdon, and G. Symonds of Racal Redac, proposed a gridless method for designing a fine-line printed circuit board. The inventors said in their groundbreaking paper, which was presented at the 22nd IEEE Design Automation Conference, that then-current designs had "stretched most previous automatic routing algorithms to the limit." (A copy is available at pcdandf .com/cms/white-papers.) Building on a concept from 1980 by Ulrich Lauther, the former Racal-Redac developer conceived a router with no defined cell size. The resulting tools forever changed the way printed circuit design is performed.