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Explore content from blog posts to technical white papers gathered together for your convenience. All written by Altium's community of PCB design experts.

Design Report Card One of my earlier BLOGs talked about PWB Cost Drivers. What is required for the PWB Value Delivery Chain is a method of predicting the cost of fabrication for the PCB substrate, as well as the cost of assembly and assembly testing. With these tools and the wiring density metrics, tradeoffs can be performed early in the product's life. Many call this Design for Manufacturing and Assembly, I call it the DFM Report Cards because that’s what its Read Article
Advanced Electronics: Understanding Design Challenges For Space Applications Part 2 In the previous article we saw that when a particle that hits a BJT with enough energy, part of this energy may get absorbed by the component and may create unwanted current between the emitter and the collector. If this issue is neglected, we may have some malfunctions. This phenomenon is called SEE (Single Event Effect). It is the responsibility of the designer to design the board in a way that will be SEE tolerant. As I wrote in the previous Read Article
Production-Grade Raspberry Pi Cluster Design This is what most people see when they think of a Raspberry Pi Cluster Just this year, two IBM-built supercomputers, named Summit and Sierra, were installed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, respectively. These two supercomputers overtook China’s Sunway TaihuLight system at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. While your next edge Read Article
Build or Buy: Which Route to go as an Engineer? Are you hesitant to buy an off-the-shelf SBC? You can build it quickly with the right modular hardware design tools There is nothing more fun than embarking on a new project, either as an entrepreneurial venture or for your own personal enjoyment. As an engineer working on an embedded systems hardware project, you will get to a point where you have to make that critical decision: which important portions of your system should you build, and which Read Article
How Modular Design Helps Hardware Startups Launch and Grow Pebble smartwatches. You can find these products on Kickstarter. Hardware is hard... those three words best describe how difficult it can be to break into the hardware market and launch a new hardware-based product. This may be difficult to accept, but between PCB and enclosure design, planning for production, prototyping and testing, and redesigns, launching a new hardware product can be a major ordeal. Pebble, one of the most anticipated Read Article
Long Live EDA: Modular System-level Electronics Design Online Modular instruments like this are much easier with online electronics design software If you’re familiar with the electronics design automation (EDA) industry, you’ll find plenty of similarities. These important software platforms have been the mainstay of electronics development since the 1980’s. Although there is plenty of differentiation between different products, as well as various levels of integration, these platforms have always seemed Read Article
PianoArc: A Circular Piano Fit for Princes and Mega Stars Earlier this year I met a fascinating designer at the San Diego Altium Users Group. Dave Starkey told me about a circular piano he and his partners had designed and built called the Pianoarc. In this interview, learn more about Starkey’s background and how he came to co-create this unique instrument that now graces a Middle Eastern Palace and is played around the world by PianoArc visionary Brockett Parsons, keyboardist for Lady Gaga. Dave Read Article
Avoid Common Pad and Via Problems in Your Last-Minute DFM Check You’ll want to examine your pads and vias for these components during a DFM check There are times where you’ll need to make last minute changes to your board before you send it off to a manufacturer. Similarly, you may need to modify an existing design before sending it off for manufacturing, which may require swapping components as well as slightly rearranging traces and other components. This can occur due to unavailable components or simple Read Article
RF Signal Chain Design for FMCW Chirped Radar Systems If you could hear the output from your chirped radar system, it might sound like a brahminy starling In automotive and UAV radar applications, radar signals are amplified throughout the signal chain. Amplification is critical for ensuring the reflected signal can be accurately detected and for maximizing the range and resolution of your radar system. Although there are some ICs that integrate an entire signal chain into a single package, these Read Article
RF Amplifier Impedance Matching at Microwave and mmWave Frequencies According to MarketWatch, the overall market for RF amplifiers is expected to surpass $27 billion by 2023. So where are all of these RF amplifiers expected to be used? You can thank 5G and the expansion of cellular networks in general for a healthy portion of the expected growth. For the PCB designers out there, RF amplifier impedance matching becomes an important design point, especially with high power amplifiers. Large-signal RF Amplifier Read Article
Cooling Fan Electrical Noise Reduction in Your PCB This GPU will need to pass EMC checks thanks to the presence of these cooling fans Who hasn’t opened up their PC or laptop and taken a long look at its fans and heatsinks? If you’re working with high speed components, high frequency components, or power components, then you’ll need to devise some sort of cooling strategy to remove heat from these components. Unless you want to use the nuclear option and install an evaporative cooling unit or Read Article
Happy Holden the Father of HDI PCBs Happy Holden, known as the father of High-Density Interconnect and the author of The HDI Handbook, is this episode’s fascinating guest. We’ll discuss how Happy went from a small-town boy to a first-name basis with legends Bill Hewlett and David Packard, the founders of HP. Happy will be a keynote speaker at our AltiumLive Annual PCB Design Summit in Frankfurt, where he’ll discuss smart factories and how we’re going to get to the point of having Read Article
Set up a Low Power Rugged Network Attached Storage server Building an Internet-of-Things device, or perhaps recording continuous video, requires a low-power, high capacity storage system, preferably utilizing inexpensive hardware. In specific cases, your device might be remote or might deal with high vibration intensities, like being mounted on a piece of industrial equipment, on a robot, or in a vehicle. Such circumstances make solid-state storage indispensable. Raspberry Pi? I started out looking at Read Article
Will All Thin Materials Flex? Telling “war stories” about flexible circuit designs is something that can provide endless hours of entertainment when you get a bunch of “geeky” PCB people together. In fact, it seems that the best of these stories have all caused countless hours of frustration while in the midst of them, but once that frustration eases, we seem to be able to find both a little (or a lot of) humor in the situation and clarity on the lesson learned. Today, I am Read Article
Designing For The Mil-aero Market—aircraft In designing PCBs that are used for aircraft delivered to the mil-aero market, there are some similarities to other products within the broader military market sector. Satisfying performance metrics relative to shock, temperature, corrosion, long-term product suppor,t and the ability to adhere to outdated standards and specifications can be challenging in this vertical market space. This article will address these factors and what is necessary to Read Article
PCB Design and Outer Layer Surface Finishes Although it might seem to be very downstream in terms of overall product development considerations, determining which PCB outer layer surface finish is the correct one is something that needs to be addressed at the forefront of the PCB design process. There are a variety of outer layer surface finishes available with both advantages and disadvantages to nearly each one. Which one is best suited to your particular design is highly dependent on Read Article
The Impact Of Glass Weave Styles On Blind Vias And Differential Skew In recent years, whenever we have talked about glass weave styles, the conversation has surrounded the effect those styles have on differential skew. But weave styles and their impact on PCB designs actually have their roots in blind vias. Both blind vias and skew can be compensated for through the mechanical spreading of the various glass weave styles. This article will discuss both elements, the ways in which they can be addressed and the Read Article