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Altium Designer - PCB Design Software

Easy, Powerful, Modern: Altium Designer is the world’s most trusted PCB design system for professionals and students. Browse our resources to learn more about how Altium Designer is revolutionizing the PCB design industry, and empowering designers to bring all of their ideas to life!

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Parasitic Extraction with an Electromagnetic Solver in PCB Routing

Parasitic Extraction with an Electromagnetic Solver in PCB Routing Parasitic extraction: the integrated circuit design community must grapple with this task on a daily basis, especially once gate features are reduced below ~350 nm and chips run at high switching speeds. The PCB community also has to deal with this idea in order to better design power delivery networks, interconnects with precise impedance, and properly quantify crosstalk and coupling mechanisms. There are many 3rd party applications that can be Read Article

Ebook: PDN Simulation and Analysis Guide In this e-book, we’ll show how to create some fundamental PDN simulation models with SPICE, and how to analyze PDN impedance with industry-standard simulation programs. Download PDF

Stripline impedance calculator

Stripline Impedance Calculator Learn more about using and interpreting results from a microstrip impedance calculator. Read Article

Microstrip impedance calculator

Microstrip Impedance Calculator Learn more about using and interpreting results from a microstrip impedance calculator. Read Article

ferrite bead PDN

Ferrite Beads and Transfer Impedance in a PDN Simulation Ferrites in a PDN and transfer impedance are investigated in this article. We’ll show how ferrites in a PDN create problems for switching circuits. Read Article

Grounded coplanar waveguide digital signal

Altium Live Question: Digital Signals in a Grounded Coplanar Waveguide? Have you considered the effects of a GPCW structure on digital signals? Here’s a hint: look at the S-parameters! Read Article

Physics of failure

Physics of Failure Analysis for PCBs and Electronics Assemblies See why high reliability designs are approached with techniques known as Physics of Failure. Read Article

5 day chip supply

What Would You Do With a 5 Day Chip Supply? US companies are reduced to a 5 day chip supply due to demand pressures and a long-lasting shortage in semiconductors. Read Article

PCB design job interview guide

PCB Design Interview Questions: A Guide for New Engineers Newer PCB designers: here’s what you’ll face during your first round of job interviews. Follow these tips if you want to make an impression. Read Article

Mode conversion

A Guide to Mode Conversion, Its Causes, and Solutions Differential pairs are most often discussed in terms of their impedance and length matching tolerance, both with the goal of ensuring proper termination at the receiver and suppression of common mode noise. On interconnects, such as board-to-board connections or cascaded transmission line arrangements, you have an important EMC compliance metric that is sometimes overlooked. This is mode conversion, which can be visualized in an S-parameter Read Article

Differential stripline impedance calculator

Differential Stripline Impedance Calculator Try our differential stripline impedance calculator, built based on Wadell’s equations. Read Article

Differential Microstrip Impedance Calculator

Differential Microstrip Impedance Calculator Learn more about using and interpreting results from a differential microstrip impedance calculator. Read Article

Spreading inductance

What is Spreading Inductance? The spreading inductance of a plane pair has a simple meaning, but it can be difficult to calculate. Here are some points designers should know about the spreading inductance of a plane pair. Read Article

pcb via size

PCB Via Size and Pad Size Guidelines Do you know what PCB via size you should use in your PCB layout? We’ll look at a few simple ways to answer this question. Read Article

PCB design basics

PCB Design Basics for New Designers New designers should follow this guide to help them get started with a new project. Read Article

Meeting Standards: IPC 6012 Class 3 Annular Ring

Meeting Standards: IPC 6012 Class 3 Annular Ring Take a look at the above image of a PCB layout, specifically the vias and drill holes poking through the silkscreen. It's quite clear that some of these vias are off-center, meaning the drill hit that created these vias was not dead-center in the receiving land. This leaves behind an annular ring, something which might be considered a defect in certain IPC product classes. Under the IPC standards for rigid boards, we have several possible Read Article

tented vias

When to Use Tented Vias in Your PCB Layout Some designers swear by tented vias and prefer to always use them. When should these be used and when should they be avoided? We’ll explore in this article. Read Article