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High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

The Correct PCB Routing and PCB Layout to Help Protect Your Board From ESD The Correct PCB Routing and PCB Layout to Help Protect Your Board From ESD When I started running, I went with a friend who had finished several ultramarathons. She would run miles from her house, do a short loop with me, and then carry on without me. When I got faster, instead of getting to go home sooner, she made our loop longer. She was tricky about it, too. She always planned a route where it would be boring for me to turn around early, or on new trails so I’d get lost trying to take a “shortcut” back. As an urban Read Article
PCB Design Guidelines for High-Frequency Circuits in Car Radar & 5G Applications PCB Design Guidelines for High-Frequency Circuits in Car Radar & 5G Applications One of the latest evolutions in next generation of 5G PCB design guidelines is being driven by two emerging technologies, 5G networks and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) enabled cars. Both of these technologies use something long feared by PCB designers, the extremely high-frequency (EHF) band. Read on and prepare your boards for a high-frequency future. This morning I saw a very strange sight while walking down my street. A long Read Article
LiDAR Bringing Autonomous Vehicles into the Mainstream Market LiDAR Bringing Autonomous Vehicles into the Mainstream Market One of my favorite movies from the 2000s was Minority Report. As an engineer, my favorite genre is Science Fiction, and Tom Cruise was my favorite actor. I imagined myself riding in one of those sleek autonomous cars, watching Tom try to outrun his fate. Those cars must have been pretty far in the future because I didn’t see any giant LIDAR arrays on them. New advances in technology could turn Science Fiction into reality. LIDAR developers are Read Article
How to Avoid Common PCB Signal Integrity Issues in Your Designs How to Avoid Common PCB Signal Integrity Issues in Your Designs Learn the common PCB signal integrity approaches to help eliminate basic system level failures. Read Article
How to Route DDR3 Memory and CPU fan-out How to Route DDR3 Memory and CPU fan-out It's becoming more and more inevitable that board designers have to do high edge rate (high speed) PCB designs when working with microcontrollers. With the power of CPU's like the Freescale iMX6 multi-core ARM device family, but at very low "cost per MIP", it's more and more desirable to use devices like this to enable rich software and user experiences in your product. But using these super-micro added memory controller bears with it the Read Article
How to Adopt Signal Integrity Analysis in Your High-Speed Design Process How to Adopt Signal Integrity Analysis in Your High-Speed Design Process As our designs become more complicated, the risk of signal integrity issues increases. Adopting signal integrity simulation in your design process can mitigate risks and preserve resources. Read to learn more. The way signals operate in reality is often very different from the theoretical applications taught in universities, and as a consequence, moving from theory to practical application can often lead to unpredictable results. A signal can be Read Article
Backdrill it Baby - How to Reduce Signal Distortions on Your PCB Backdrill it Baby - How to Reduce Signal Distortions on Your PCB Over the years, engineers have developed several approaches to deal with noises that can distort high speed digital signal integrity in printed circuit board backdrill designs. And as our designs push new boundaries, so does the complexity of our techniques to cope with new challenges. Today, the speed of digital design systems is in the GHz, a speed that creates more prominent challenges than the past. And with edge rates at the picoseconds, any Read Article
To Autoroute or Not to Autoroute-A History of Failed Design Automation Autorouting, or No Autorouting? A History of Failed Design Automation Learn about the complete history of EDA design automation and the evolution of PCB autorouting technology from the 1980s to today. Welcome to the world of electronics. It’s 2016, and we’re now seeing more technological sophistication than in any other period in human history. Just this year alone autonomous vehicles have began their introduction into the public sphere, rockets are being re-landed from space for reuse with finely tuned precision Read Article
How to Automate Your High-Speed Design Process How to Automate Your High-Speed Design Process Keeping track of individual segment lengths for nets, via depths, or pin lengths in a spreadsheet can be burdensome. Learn how to automate your high-speed design process with new technology in Altium Designer®. High Speed design is one of the most challenging tasks that an electrical engineer can take on. There are any number of factors that can affect the way a high speed signal will respond. A misconception is that High Speed Design is a Read Article
The Peak of Engineering Efficiency is Now Available in Altium Designer 17 The Peak of Engineering Efficiency is Now Available in Altium Designer 17 The Peak of Engineering Efficiency and PCB Design Technology is Now Available in Altium 17 The engineering mentality is one focused on efficiency and creativity. And whether you’re designing electronics in today’s autonomous vehicles or connected devices, the careful balance between art and science walks a very thin line. Sooner or later, you’re bound to hit a roadblock. Not in your ideas, but in executing those ideas efficiently in your tools Read Article
Time-Saving Technologies for Your PCB Routing Workflow Time-Saving Technologies for Your PCB Routing Workflow Whether you’re new to electronics design or have thirty years under your belt, most engineers agree: interactive routing is the most challenging and tedious task in the PCB design process. Experienced designers enjoy the challenge, applying their creative puzzle-solving talents to win the many battles and ultimately the war. Designers who are new to the task and those who would rather focus on other aspects of design wind up struggling in Read Article
Area Sensitive Part Of The Board Area Sensitive Part Of The Board It’s that phase of the project when you’re about to hand over a development released product to production. From the development perspective, everything, from designs, parts, models, BOMs, and documentation, are all in their release state. It’s a time that calls for a true celebration after weeks of sleepless nights to finish the design on time and within budget. Then you get the flash back with few what-if questions; did sourcing get the new Read Article
Adopting Signal Integrity In Your High Speed Design Process Adopting Signal Integrity In Your High Speed Design Process With switching speeds in TTL and newer logic families being fast enough to process data at Mbps and Gbps data rates, high speed design techniques are now critical for nearly every PCB designer. As rise times in digital signals have become faster, designers must either make their interconnects shorter or devise some important design strategies to prevent signal integrity problems. Today’s engineers need a complete toolset for signal integrity Read Article
The Breadth and Depth of Your PCB Design Workflow The Breadth and Depth of Your PCB Design Workflow The routing process remains the most time-consuming layout task, Altium Designer interactive routing technology makes design dense board layouts much easier. Modern printed circuit boards must address a broad set of technology challenges. PCB design software needs to include tools that help design engineers stay productive while ensuring new designs are fully manufacturable. Designers that create advanced technology rely on interactive routing Read Article
Enhancing Your High-Speed Design with xSignals Enhancing Your High-Speed Design with xSignals To learn more about this topic please see the full solution - Enhancing Your High-Speed Design with xSignals - at Altium.com. Read Article
Getting Your Layer Stack Right Getting Your Layer Stack Right An improper layer stack in your PCB design is one of the most common errors leading to fabrication failures and rejects. Every multilayer circuit board needs a precise PCB stack-up and accurate layout before it can be sent for PCB manufacturing. When you have the right set of circuit board design tools, you can turn your stackup into a real PCB layout and prepare the documentation your fabricator needs. The multi-layer PCB troubleshooting tools Read Article