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If you remember your days in school, then you probably remember the feeling of happiness and celebration when you pass a big exam. You’ll feel the same sense of adulation when your board spin passes a barrage of pre and post assembly tests, but a complex design might not reach that stage unless you implement the right design for testability methods. There are some simple steps that can help your manufacturer identify and quickly implement...

From what I’ve heard in some of my favorite podcasts, successful people keep a lot of to-do lists. Likewise, PCB designers can ensure their own successful manufacturing run when they keep a PCB design review checklist. After you send your design data over to your manufacturer, their engineers will go through your design with a fine-tooth comb, looking for anything that could reduce yields or anything that appears as a discrepancy between design...

In this session, we will cover PCB routing methods, Polygons for power distribution and Design Rule Checking - SRCs.

Judy Warner: Mike, we are hearing and watching the tough impact of the coronavirus on the world stage. From your perspective as a globally-focused editor, what are you seeing and hearing that is immediately impacting the electronics industry? Mike Buetow: There is clearly disruption in the supply chain at several levels. Taiwanese-owned factories make up the leading share of bare boards worldwide, at about 34%. About 63% of the output value of...

Bare board testing is like a moment of truth, where your fabricator and your design team determines whether a board passes inspection. Some basic test fixtures and testing points should be indicated in your schematic and your PCB layout, especially when they are critical for evaluating board functionality. So what is the best way to do this? You might rely on your manufacturer to assign test points, but for critical circuit blocks, you should...

When looking through the various transmission line impedance values, characteristic impedance and differential impedance generally stand out as the two important values as these are typically specified in signaling standards. However, there are really six transmission line impedance values that are important in PCB design. Sometimes there are seven, depending on which textbooks or technical articles you read. Characteristic impedance equations...

An article in the September 2019 issue of IEEE Spectrum claimed that silicon interconnect fabric, a method for connecting chiplets on a multichip module or advanced package, would eliminate PCBs and bulky SoCs for many applications, specifically motherboards. It's now 2023, and no one seems to have ditched PCBs yet; the demand for PCBs remains as strong as ever and is still projected to grow at double-digit CAGR. This is despite the expected...

Power integrity issues are often assessed from the power supply side, but examining IC output is equally crucial. Decoupling and bypass capacitors help stabilize power fluctuations on the PDN, ensuring consistent signal levels and maintaining a steady voltage at an IC’s power and ground pins. To assist with effective usage, we've outlined essential design guidelines for bypassing and decoupling capacitors in your next PCB. This blog explores the...

I remember spending hours on circuit analysis problems in my electronics classes, and I learned to analyze all sorts of filter/amplifier configurations by hand. The circuits were usually tractable with Ohm’s law and Kirchoff’s laws, as long as there was no feedback in the circuit. Circuits for advanced applications, such as wideband or multiband matching circuits for RF components, can quickly become difficult to analyze by hand. But as the...