ANSYS Event to Highlight Cutting Edge Technology Development

If you follow technology news, it would be hard to deny that we live in exciting times. In some ways there is an unparalleled amount of big and cool technology development going on right now. We all have followed the rise of Tesla Motors. They took over a long vacant US big-auto plant in Fremont and are reinventing the US automobile industry. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also the progenitor of Hyperloop, which promises to bring huge change to terrestrial transportation. Space launches by private companies are something we are hearing about with increasing regularity. Even wild ideas like the levitating skateboard from Back To The Future are starting to move toward reality.

This is not even mentioning the “Dick Tracy” watches that are heading our way. We all know that product design capability is rapidly accelerating. Quite honestly we are finally getting the things that we were promised in Tomorrow Land. Who remembers seeing the ‘video phone’ there at Disneyland in the early 70’s? At the core of all this there is the technology that supports the development of these products; and there are the visionaries that push and apply this technology.

ANSYS is a technology company that provides an amazingly wide array of software for designing things from on-chip inductors all the way up to spacecraft. They are hosting their 2015 Convergence Conference on April 21 2015 in Santa Clara. Not only do they have a good mix of talks based on applications of their design and analysis software, but they have assembled a fascinating line up of keynote speakers. First up is Josh Giegal with Hyperloop. Hyperloop is moving forward in 2016 with the construction of a 5 mile track along California’s I-5 in the Central Valley. Josh’s talk is about their simulation based development process for their complete system. The initial build of the 5 mile loop will not achieve the top speeds they ultimately are planning for, but will allow them to work out the finer points of the system, including passenger loading, etc.

Following Josh will be Thomas Markusic from Firefly Space Systems. (Any Joss Whedon fans out there?) He previously worked at Space-X, but started Firefly to build practical small-satellite launch systems. Thomas’ talk should be fascinating. He likes to talk about rockets as being systems that are highly out of equilibrium. Nature of course hates this, which is what makes rocket science so challenging.

The keynotes come back to earth with Mark Frohnmayer talking about his electric car startup Arcimoto. He is looking for efficient and practical design solutions to produce feasible consumer products. For instance he is opting to use lead acid batteries – proven low cost technology rather that lithium ion.

Finally what wiz-bang line up of new technology would be complete without a discussion on magnetic levitation? Greg Henderson, who founded Arc Pax, will talk about their magnetic hoverboard that is featured on Kickstarter. Quite a line up, and this is before we even get to the other talks by ANSYS and their customers covering numerous additional real world applications for their broad line of multiple physics products.

There will be four tracks in the afternoon: Fluid Mechanics & Multiphysics, Structural Mechanics, and two on Electronics. On SemiWiki.com we usually focus on electronics design, and this ANSYS-wide agenda has plenty of talks directly related to electronics. They include IC and PCB design and analysis talks by Emulex, Applied Micro Circuits, and of course several ANSYS speakers. The topics range from ESD, board and package co-design, signal integrity to electromagnetic design and analysis.

Interestingly the other two non-electronics tracks have some interesting fodder for designers of electronics based products. There is a talk on simulating a li-Ion battery solution. Another talk covers multiphysics simulations for wearable devices. Plus there are a lot more talks that look compelling. One that caught my eye was on the structural analysis of the new San Francisco Bay Bridge design.

All this and a free lunch! The ANSYS Convergence Conference looks like a great event to learn more about applications in, and adjacent to, electronics design. It will also offer excellent networking opportunities and hopefully create formal and informal conversations that could drive exciting new technological development.