Silicon seemed to get all the credit. The project generated 214 research papers, fostering rapid transfer of the new technology to the PWB industry as a whole, and led to the formation of a successful new company. The NCMS convened and coordinated the ATP project, which was a joint effort to overcome a host of technical deficiencies in PWBs blamed in part on cutbacks in corporate research and development. Since the early 1980s, American companies had been losing their grip on the world PWB market, the U.S. market share fell from 42 percent to a low of 26 percent in the early 1990s. PWBs provide a surface for mounting and interconnecting electrical components.
Boards can have a conductive pattern on one or both sides.
The U.S. industry makes mostly rigid PWBs, reinforced with woven glass, which are used in subassemblies that contain heavy components. Most of these are multilayered boards consisting of conducting and insulating materials bonded together. U.S. companies also make some flexible boards out of thin-film materials, typically polyimide. The ATP funding accelerated progress on 32 research tasks by at least a year, according to a case study by Albert Link, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is an important factor in an industry where timing is critical.