High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

Silicon Photonics Integration Challenges in PCB Design

Silicon Photonics Integration Challenges in PCB Design Silicon photonics will use the same manufacturing processes used in silicon ICs I was honored to meet Richard Soref at a recent IEEE conference and discuss the current state of electronic-photonic integrated circuits (EPICs). The man is often called “the Father of Silicon Photonics”, and for good reason. If you ask him nicely, he’ll tell you how to build all the fundamental logic gates as photonic circuits directly on silicon. Now is a landmark Read Article

It’s Your Loss: Determining And Controlling Loss In The PCB Design Process

It’s Your Loss: Determining And Controlling Loss In The PCB Design Process When it comes to designing a high-speed PCB, we always have to factor in the dynamic of signal loss. And, there are lots of areas where loss can occur. Accounting for all of these aspects of loss can be a challenging and time-consuming task as too much loss can prevent a high-speed PCB from functioning properly. This article will address the various aspects of loss, how they factor into the PCB design process, and how loss can be effectively Read Article

The Evolution Of Simulation Technology and Crosstalk

The Evolution Of Simulation Technology and Crosstalk In Part 1 of this blog, I discussed the evolution of simulation as it applied to calculating impedance control. This article focuses on crosstalk which, along with impedance, is one of the more straightforward aspects associated with simulation. The following describes the various elements associated with crosstalk, the challenges associated with it and how to ensure that your PCB design meets crosstalk requirements. Crosstalk Solving for Read Article

The Evolution Of Simulation Technology and Impedance

The Evolution Of Simulation Technology and Impedance When design engineers started using simulation toolsets, we originally cared only about impedance and terminations. Then when things got fast, we had to worry about loss in the path. Next, we had to address differential pairs (which are specialized transmission lines) and skew. Most recently, we have had to worry about the effect of vias at very high data rates. Note: Of all of these elements, skew is the only one which cannot be simulated. From Read Article

Ethernet Layout and Routing Standards: MAC, PHY, and RJ-45 Connectors

Ethernet Layout Routing Guidelines: MAC, PHY, and RJ-45 Connectors Magnetics termination has little to do with actual magnets. Here are some important ethernet layout routing guidelines (MII, RMII, RGMII, etc.) to ensure signal integrity. Read Article

High-Speed PCB Design: Just How Fast Is Fast?

High-Speed PCB Design: Just How Fast Is Fast? As noted in several previous blogs, these days, “high-speed PCB” is pretty much ubiquitous in our industry. And, as cited, we always say that regardless of the end product or implementation every PCB is high speed by virtue of the IC technology incorporated in it. A few years back, we started saying that what was important was the edge rates of the components, or more specifically, the interconnections between the component edges and the boards Read Article

Intro to High-Speed Design TOPICS IN THIS SOLUTION Complicated PCB Design for High-Speed Applications High-Speed Constraints Are Used in Every Phase of the Design Process Analyzing the Design for Consistent Operation that Meets Specification You’re creating products that are made for the present day, which means moving past traditional PCB technology and design techniques. It takes more than innovation to perform these tasks well - how do you create high-speed interfaces Read Article

PDS Design For Ultra-low Power Implementations

PDS Design For Ultra-low Power Implementations When it comes to low power implementations, products are characterized as very rarely having high current options, being small in size, being optimized for power management and having the necessity for batteries to last as long as possible. There’s a broad spectrum of products that fall under these criteria including, but not limited to, smartphones, smartwatches, remote monitoring devices and medical devices to name a few. In terms of PDS design Read Article

Power Play—Successfully Designing Power Delivery Systems

Power Play—Successfully Designing Power Delivery Systems Across the industry, the design element that continues to cause the most problems is the power delivery system (PDS). And, as a consulting firm, for the last several years the majority of problems that we have been called in to solve have always centered on PDS problems. As noted in my previous blog on guard traces and their ineffectiveness, every time we have been called upon to solve an EMI problem, we have always ended up fixing the PDS. This Read Article

DFSI: Stripline Differential Impedance Calculation Made Easy

DFSI: Stripline Differential Impedance Calculation Made Easy As a PCB designer, you may hear your signal integrity overlords dictate controlled impedance with a specific value and tolerance. As someone who has requested these things, I know designers have trouble with implementing this in their trace geometry. This article details what impedance is, how it is calculated, and a practical way for PCB designers to determine the proper geometry for their application. When designing high-speed serial circuits Read Article

Datasheet Reliability with Ben Jordan

Datasheet Reliability with Ben Jordan In this OnTrack episode Judy Warner and Ben Jordan discuss about Datasheet Reliability. Can you trust them? And what does “Gilded” mean? This & more about verifying app notes. Watch the full episode. Read Article

PCIe BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing

PCIe Card Guides: BGA Fanouts and Escape Routing With all the chips that appear on a PCI or PCIe card, laying out and routing these boards might seem extremely complicated. However, the standardized architecture of PCIe provides considerable flexibility for designers. One issue that is a bit complicated is PCIe BGA fanouts for components on these cards. The trick to implementing a fanout and escape routing strategy is ensuring that you comply with the PCIe layout and routing specifications Read Article

Series Termination Resistance Calculation

Series Termination Resistor Calculation With transmission lines, some things never seem to be simple. Determining the termination technique and the values of components in a termination network shouldn’t be a difficult task. Most PCB design programs force you to look online for calculators, or you’ll have to run the calculations by hand. Instead, your design software should make it easy to test a range of component values in your termination network. Some components, traces Read Article

LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines

LVDS PCB Layout Guidelines for Ensuring Signal Integrity When you first get started in high-speed PCB design, you'll spend a lot of time encountering and understanding an alphabet soup of acronyms. MIPI, USB, PCIe interface, SATA PCB layout... the list of acronyms used to name high-speed digital interfaces is long. Low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) is an older interface that was standardized for differential data transfer at high speeds, but it remains in use today for a variety of imaging and Read Article

All About CMOS, ECL, and TTL Propagation Delay in High Speed PCBs

All About CMOS, ECL, and TTL Propagation Delay in High Speed PCBs I still remember the 386 hand-me-down computer my parents gave me as a kid. It was useful for writing simple QBasic programs and spending hours playing computer games, but the computers of today leave my old 386 PC in the dust. With further development of computer architecture and the demands of more modern devices, the propagation delay in logic circuits becomes an important design parameter in a number of systems. In particular, TTL propagation Read Article

Tips for High Frequency PCB Design in Embedded Systems

Tips for High Frequency PCB Design in Embedded Systems Today's high-speed embedded systems incorporate diverse functionality, components, digital interfaces, and of course, wireless/RF signaling. If you're designing embedded systems with any level of computing power that also includes an analog front end, then you have multiple mixed-signal design challenges to overcome. Whether it's a simple sub-1 GHz radio connection, Wifi/BLE, or multi-gigabit Ethernet, embedded systems need some way to interface Read Article

PCIe Layout and Routing Guidelines

PCIe in PCB Design: Layout and Routing Guidelines Opening up a computer as a kid and staring at the complicated mess of card slots, chips, and other electronics on a motherboard always made me wonder how anyone could keep all the details about PCB layout straight. Learning more about PCB design for computer architecture and peripherals made me appreciate the dedication PCB designers have for building great electronic devices. Modern GPU, USB, audio, and networking cards can all run on the back Read Article