Engineering News

Read the latest news and information for pcb design enineers.

Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide

Level Up Your Design Skills - Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide We are happy to announce the release of the new Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide. Whether you are new to Altium Designer or you want to brush up on some topics, the Altium Designer Getting Started User Guide will take you from a beginner to a master in PCB design. This is only the beginning! This guide will be updated with new information based on user feedback. Let’s first go over the contents of the guide. Read Article

words on rocks "never. stop. learning."

Resources for the Lifelong Learner A few years ago, in a recap video of AltiumLive, Dr. Eric Bogatin, the Dean of Signal Integrity Academy, stated the following: “Everybody recognizes that you have to continually grow. It’s kind of like in Alice in Wonderland. Alice is in the Red Forest, and the line goes something like this: ‘in this forest, you have to run faster and faster, just to stay in the same place!’ And I think that encapsulates where the industry is today. The most Read Article

Antipad diameter IPC APEX 2021

Antipad Diameter, Crosstalk, and IBM’s Results from IPC APEX EXPO 2021 Interlayer crosstalk begins with antipad diameters, and IBM’s results help us see how antipad diameter on back-drilled PTHs affect signal integrity. Read Article

Quantum computing electronics

Quantum Computing Electronics vs. Photonics: New Chips Will Shift the Balance Read more about the newest advance in photonics for quantum computing. The electronics in quantum computers are being challenged by new photonic chips. Read Article

Remotely Powering Devices, Wirelessly

Remotely Powering Devices, Wirelessly With electronic devices being available in smaller and smaller sizes and the prevalence of wi-fi networks, the rise of remote monitoring devices around the home and the workplace continues to grow. Smart heating solutions now place sensors in every room, monitoring everything from temperature to occupancy to provide a highly efficient zonal heating system. Intruder detection systems no longer require thousands of meters of wiring to be installed Read Article

symbolic division

Guidelines for Creating Useful Schematic Symbols The schematic symbols that you use to represent the components are at the heart of your schematic design. The quality of the symbol and how it is arranged can be one of the most critical factors influencing your schematic’s readability. A poor quality schematic symbol will lead to an unreadable schematic sheet that is difficult to understand. I created the largest open-source library for Altium Designer over five years ago, initially as a way to Read Article

Using a Thermal Camera for PCB Diagnostics

Using a Thermal Camera for PCB Diagnostics There has likely been a time when you’ve powered on a freshly built prototype for the first time, only to find you’ve hit the current limit on the lab power supply. Even as you increase the current limit to way beyond what you would expect your board to draw, the lab power supply is still limited. If it’s safe, you poke around the board with your finger, but you can’t feel any parts that are hot to the touch. Also, probing around with a Read Article

What does AMD’s purchase of Xilinx mean for the electronics world?

What does AMD’s purchase of Xilinx mean for the electronics world? Who is Xilinx? While AMD is focused on microprocessor production, Xilinx is a specialist producer of FPGA (field-programmable gate arrays), which are particularly useful for telecommunications applications, and the development of 5G across the world has opened up significant growth in this sector. The expected number of new 5G cellular base stations required over the next five to ten years will be in the millions. Xilinx has been one of the front Read Article

IPC-2551 digital twin

IPC-2551 Digital Twin Standard Released Read our brief on the new IPC-2551 standard and how digital twins might be used in the PCB industry. Read Article

Create a Buck-Boost Power Supply

Create a Buck-Boost Power Supply In this series of articles, we’re looking at the design and implementation of the main types of power regulators and converters you might use in an electronics project. I gave a graduate engineer who I mentor a series of requirements to demonstrate each of these types and have recorded the results here so you can work through the same exercises and hopefully come up with the same results. The next switching regulator is the last in our switching Read Article

How to Design a Boost Voltage Regulator

How to Design a Boost Voltage Regulator In this series of articles, we’re looking at the design and implementation of the main types of power regulators and converters you might use in an electronics project. I gave a graduate engineer who I mentor a series of requirements to demonstrate each of these types and have recorded the results here so you can work through the same exercises and hopefully come up with the same results. For the next switching power supply project from my Read Article

Assembly: The Last Step In The PCB Product Development Process

Assembly: The Last Step In The PCB Product Development Process As pointed out in previous articles, design is the first step in the PCB product development process, so the board designer needs to understand how the downstream processes will impact his design processes/selections/decisions, and this understanding needs to encompass both technical and financial considerations. These deliberations are viewed and weighted as trade-offs. What might make sense from a technical standpoint may not always make sense Read Article

High-speed flex circuits

Addressing Differential Signaling In Flex Circuits As noted in many previous articles, due to high-speed and high data-rate designs, most modern products utilize differential signaling. If utilizing the right design protocols and design toolsets, handling differential signaling in standard, rigid PCBs is easily doable. But utilizing differential signaling in flex circuits creates another set of issues, questions, and design challenges. This article will address how differential signaling is Read Article

Raspberry Pi microcontroller

Raspberry Pi Enters the World of Microcontrollers Learn more about the new Raspberry Pi microcontroller, its specifications, and ideal applications. Read Article

IEEE P370 high speed interconnect standard

The IEEE P370 Standard for High Speed PCB Interconnects Signal integrity engineers should pay attention to the IEEE P370 standard for characterizing interconnects out to 50 GHz. Read Article

California electric cars

California Bets on Electric Cars and Plans to Ban Gasoline Car Sales by 2035 Governor Gavin Newsome is betting on California electric cars. Get ready for a big shift in PMIC and battery markets. Read Article

Neuromorphic computing robotics

Neuromorphic Computing Chips Make Transistors Feel Obsolete Intel’s upcoming platform for neuromorphic computing, the Loihi neuromorphic processor, reflects a broader trend in the AI hardware community, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the packaging. The Loihi processor packs major changes to the underlying transistor architecture and uses a unique signaling method used for computation. Intel’s products and other chips from hardware startups are starting to resemble the functionality in the human Read Article