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High-Speed PCB Design

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High-Speed PCB Design

Embedded Capacitance Materials Embedded Capacitance Materials Overview One important material that can appear in a high-speed PCB is an embedded capacitance material. These laminates aid power integrity in small boards with high layer counts. Read Article
Board Layer Stackup Considerations for High Speed Board Design Board Layer Stackup Considerations for High Speed Board Design The PCB layer stackup you build to support high-speed board design needs to be engineered based on layer counts, layer thicknesses, and component lead size. Read Article
High-Speed PCB Stackup Design The High-Speed PCB Stackup Design Challenge Stackups for high-speed PCBs can be designed many ways, but these systems must be built by balancing engineering constraints in a final product. Read Article
Reflectionless Matching vs. Conjugate Matching Reflectionless Matching vs. Conjugate Matching: An Apparent Contradiction Are reflectionless matching and conjugate matching contradictory? When we look at the formulation for power waves and S-parameters, we see where these are different. Read Article
USB High Speed (ULPI) Routing USB High Speed (ULPI) Routing Learn what ULPI is for USB High Speed interfaces, as well as best practices for routing this bus on a PCB. Read Article
How to Select Copper Foil How to Select Copper Foil for High-Frequency PCB Design Learn how to choose the right kind of copper foil for your high frequency PCB stackup. The same ideas apply to selection of copper for high-speed PCBs. Read Article
The Skin Effect, Current Density, and the Electromagnetic Field The Skin Effect, Current Density, and the Electromagnetic Field Do you know how the skin effect alters the electric and magnetic field around a transmission line? We’ll address an important misconception in this article. Read Article
PCB Teardrops on Differential Pairs Should You Place Teardrops on Differential Pairs? We’ll look at an interesting question from an OnTrack podcast guest about teardrops on differential pairs. Will they create signal integrity problems? Read Article
pcie ac coupling capacitors PCIe Routing with AC Coupling Capacitors AC coupling capacitors remove DC offset so that high speed PCIe lanes can operate properly. Learn more about PCIe AC coupling capacitor selection and placement. Read Article
NVMe M.2 PCIe connector stubs A Brief Study of Stubs on a PCIe Connector Stubs are an important topic in high-speed PCB design, and there is a longstanding guideline that stubs should always be removed from all vias on high-speed digital interconnects. While stubs are bad for high-speed lines, they do not always need to be removed. What is more important is to predict the loss profile and frequencies, and to floorplan appropriately to try and prevent such losses. In this article, I’ll look at some simulation results Read Article
3-port S-parameters How to Get 3-port S-parameters From a 2-port VNA Measurement S-parameters are fundamental quantities in signal integrity, and an ability to understand them from measurement or analysis is very important. If you have a 3-port network, like a power divider or circulator, it may appear that you must use a 3-port VNA to measure these S-parameters. It is always acceptable to measure between two ports, but you need to know what exactly it is you are measuring. As it turns out, you can use a 2-port VNA Read Article
skew sources high speed PCB Addressing Skew Sources in High Speed PCBs Sometimes, when we talk about skew, we aren't as specific as we should be. Most discussions of skew and jitter deal with the type of skew incurred during routing, namely due to length mismatches in differential pairs and fiber weave-induced skew. In fact, there are many different sources of skew that contribute to total jitter on an interconnect, and it's important to quantify these in serial and parallel buses that require precise timing control Read Article
Pin-Package Delay and Via Delay Pin-Package Delay and Via Delay in High Speed Length Tuning Take a look at the inside of some integrated circuit packages, and you’ll find a number of wires bonded to the semiconductor die and the pads at the edge of the component's package. As a signal traverses makes its way along an interconnect and into a destination circuit, signals need to travel across these bond wires and pads before they are interpreted as a logic state. As you look around the edge of an IC, these bond wires can have different Read Article
Advanced Topics in High-Speed Design This track is for the engineer who understands high-speed design requirements and wants to learn design practices to help ensure Watch Video
Fundamentals of High-Speed Design This track is for the designer who is new to high-speed layout and routing practices and wants to understand how Watch Video
High-Frequency PCB Material Best Practices for High-Frequency PCB Materials Selection High frequency PCB design can seem esoteric, and I've heard many an engineer describe it as "black magic"! The subject is also a bit confusing, especially once someone asks which frequencies could be reasonably considered "high". The reality is that some of the challenges present in high speed design also appear in high frequency design, but we think about them in different ways. Before you do anything inside the layout for a high-speed or RF PCB Read Article
PCB Copper Foil Types of PCB Copper Foil for High-Frequency Design Does your design need smooth PCB copper foil? It all depends on the frequency range you’re working in. Learn more in this article. Read Article