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Before design software, microwave engineers spent their days with copper tape and soldering iron applying cut and try methods. Without software, the MMIC, the RFIC, the LTCC, the SoP and SiP would almost certainly not exist and we would not have today's smart phones or smart weapons.

"How Design Software Changed the World, Part I" (Microwave Journal, July 2009) looked at design software and microwave hardware from the early 1960s up through 1987. During this period, the US defense department needed to develop smarter systems to counter balance the superior size of the soviet military in Eastern Europe. The weapon systems envisioned required reliable, high performance RF/microwave electronics. This is when MIC and MMIC technologies came into favor and design began to rely on "home-grown" software programs.

The Department of Defense (DoD) helped fund software development that affected MMIC implementation, namely simulation, layout and work flows. The microwave and mm-wave monolithic integrated circuits (MIMIC) program promoted collaboration between defense contractors, software providers and branches of the armed services to further the adoption of software tools among engineers.

By 1988, the Reagan administration, which was responsible for the military build-up of the 1980s, was in its final year. Military spending, which peaked at 6.2 percent of GDP in 1986, was trimmed down to 5.8 percent and would continue to decline to the present day (roughly 3.0 percent). However, the MIMIC program was well-funded and entering its second year. Among the major commercial RF/microwave software vendors vying for contract money were EEsof, Compact and Hewlett Packard. Over the next decade, software would be influenced by the downsizing of defense spending, the emergence of the commercial mobile communications market, new technologies, start-ups, mergers, acquisitions and fierce competition among vendors.