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Not all design rules are applicable in every situation, and they are often communicated without context. One particular rule for sizing traces is to always opt for wider traces when possible. Unlike many rules of thumb I’ve seen thrown about, this particular trace rule has some merit. However, when you need to control trace impedance and simultaneously reduce ringing, you need to carefully control the trace width to ensure transmission lines have...

Advanced devices require collaboration among multiple team members to ensure functionality and manufacturability. With embedded systems, this extends beyond a hardware team to include software developers. If you want your new product to be manufacturable at scale, then at some point, you will need to involve your manufacturer in the collaborative process. This is especially true with high speed digital devices and high speed analog devices. If...

One of the best reasons to be in the electronics industry is because of the rapid pace of development. There are several new technologies that are becoming more widely available, namely silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) High Electron Mobility Transistors (also known as ‘FETs’). If you’re an expert in the power electronics field, these transistors are probably familiar. If you’re not and you still want to know what’s new, here’s what...

Graphical representation of a Tokamak fusion reactor (Image source: pixabay.com) Many of us spend a lot of time patting ourselves on the back and telling ourselves how clever we are as a species. We often hear claims that the total sum of human knowledge is doubling every ‘X’ years, where the value of ‘X’ depends on who you are talking to. The inventor and visionary Richard Buckminster Fuller originated the concept of the “Knowledge Doubling...

Photo on top is Ideal-Tek ST-5S Smart Tweezers (Image source: Saelig.com) I must admit that I'm blown away when I think of the test and measurement equipment that's available to electronics engineers these days. I'm not talking about high-end, eye-wateringly expensive tools like multi-channel gigahertz oscilloscopes and logic analyzers that are available primarily for professional engineers working for big companies. Instead, I'm thinking of the...

Altium Concord Pro™ as a standalone product and brand name has been discontinued and the capabilities are now available as part of our Altium enterprise solutions. Learn more here. Precursor To help PCB Designers to become better at what they do, the series of Blogs on Concord Pro are broken down by category. Each category walks through the entire process of setting up and efficiently using Concord Pro. Furthermore, at the end of each blog are...

I just heard that the Embedded Vision Alliance (embedded-vision.com) has rebranded itself as the Edge AI and Vision Alliance (edge-ai-vision.com). To be honest, I think this change is absolutely the right thing for the alliance and I also think this is the perfect time for the change. The original Embedded Vision Alliance was founded in 2011 by Jeff Bier and Berkeley Design Technology Inc. (BDTI). Although this is only nine years ago at the time...

New ‘connectome’ maps some 25,000 neurons in a fruit fly’s brain, a portion of which are shown here (Image source: Google / FlyEM) Sometimes I feel sad about all of the things we don’t yet know, but these feelings are usually counterbalanced by the excitement of all the things we are constantly discovering. Many of these discoveries are made possible by the technologies conceived by scientists and realized by engineers, such as the scanning...

These days, the designers of electronic systems have a wealth of affordably display technologies to choose from. Even a relatively simple system like a toaster oven typically boasts a small liquid crystal display (LCD) or light-emitting diode (LED) display. Of course, developers weren't always this lucky. Throughout much of the first half of the twentieth century, the most widely used display technology (apart from small incandescent light bulbs...