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PCB Routing

Lies Your Fabricator May Have Told You

Lies Your Fabricator May Have Told You In some of our previous articles, we have talked about the various things that go wrong when a board design is turned over to the fabricator for manufacturing. Sometimes, the things that can go awry are due to design errors but the bulk of them can be ascribed to errors incurred during the fabrication process. This article will describe the errors that can be encountered and what, if anything, can be done to avoid them. We have previously Read Article

Using Prepreg vs. Core for Controlled Impedance Routing

Using Prepreg vs. Core for Controlled Impedance Routing When I was first learning the finer points of PCB design, my first impression that the core was some type of special material that did not have close resemblance to the other layers. This is not necessarily the case, but designers need to work within the core/prepreg stackup constraints imposed by the PCB manufacturing process. Although you may be constrained as to how the layers in your board are arranged, you can choose which core/prepreg Read Article

How the Fiber Weave Effect Influences High Frequency Signal Integrity

How the Fiber Weave Effect Influences High Frequency Signal Integrity Orienting traces and choosing the right weave style can help compensate for the fiber weave effect. Watch out for resonances at high frequencies. Learn more in this latest PCB design blog. Read Article

Orthogonal Trace Routing PCB

Pros and Cons of Orthogonal Trace Routing in Multilayer PCBs What would limit your use of orthogonal trace routing? Like most design questions, it depends on your signal speed and stackup, as well as placement in the PCB layout. Read this latest PCB design blog by expert Zachariah Peterson to learn more. Read Article

The Fundamentals of High Speed SerDes Design

The Fundamentals of High Speed SerDes Design High speed SerDes design goes far beyond computer peripherals The challenges in high speed SerDes design filter right down to the PCB level and are all about backplane/daughtercard design, transmission line layout, selecting proper equalization schemes, and much more. This even gets down to the fundamentals, where stackup and power integrity become critical when driving transmitters and receiver ICs. If you’re designing a PCB as part of a SerDes Read Article

31:31 Transmission Line Impedance Calculation With Altium Designer Today’s PCBs contain many transmission lines. Combine this with increased clock frequencies and data rates and the result is a critical challenge to high-speed design. Neglecting these dynamics can undermine product development by compromising performance, power consumption, EMC/EMI compliance, and more - leading to delayed design cycles and opening gaps that can be exploited by your competition. Hone your high-speed design skills by joining us as we discuss the typical transmission lines encountered in today’s designs, the PCB variables that affect impedance, as well as how to create, calculate, and design transmission lines in Altium Designer. Learn how to maximize the built in SIMBEOR® engine by Simberian to craft impedance profiles and manage transmission lines in your designs. This Live Webinar recording covers the following: Current trends in electronics development PCB transmission line model and impedance calculations Transmission line with specified impedance in Altium Designer Don’t pass up on this opportunity to experience the industry’s best in class design experience! Watch Video

PCB Bus Routing and Layout: The Basics

PCB Bus Routing and Layout: The Basics Power supply on a network switch Modern computing simply wouldn’t be possible without PCB bus routing and layout. The same goes for many digital systems that manipulate data in parallel. If you’re working on a new PCB design and you need to route a bus between different devices, there are some simple rules to follow to ensure your signals aren’t distorted and that successive devices are triggered correctly. As some designers may question the Read Article

MIPI Physical Layer Routing and Signal Integrity

MIPI Physical Layer Routing and Signal Integrity If you’re not familiar with MIPI physical layer design and routing, we’ve compiled the information you need for M-PHY, D-PHY, and C-PHY. PCB designers this one is a must read. Read Article

Patrick Züger Talks About the Altium Designer 20 New and Exciting Features

Patrick Züger Talks About the Altium Designer 20 New and Exciting Features "Altium Designer - for me, it’s the best (PCB design) tool" says Patrick Züger, a veteran Altium Beta user. Patrick shares Altium Designer 20 new and exciting features. Interactive routing is one. Read Article

PCB Trace Width vs. Current Table for High Power Designs

PCB Trace Width vs. Current Table for High Power Designs Copper is a strong conductor with a high melting point, but you should still do your best to keep temperatures low. This is where you’ll need to properly size power rail widths to keep the temperature within a certain limit. However, this is where you need to consider the current flowing in a given trace. When working with a power rail, high-voltage components, and other portions of your board that are sensitive to heat, you can determine the Read Article

1:3:28 Experience The New World-Class Interactive Router in Altium Designer 20 Altium Designer 20 ushers in a whole new era of possibilities and amongst them is a truly game-changing Interactive Routing Watch Video

Delay Tuning for High Speed Signals: What You Need to Know

Delay Tuning for High Speed Signals: What You Need to Know Length matched lines in a PCB Take a look at two signal readouts on an oscilloscope, and you can see how length/timing mismatches between signal traces can improperly trigger downstream gates. The situation becomes worse when we look at the travel time for a master clock signal and the roundtrip time for sent/received data in different computer interfaces. SDRAM has solved this nicely by placing a clock in the slave device and sending a clock Read Article

29:12 Altium Designer 20 - Key Features Sneak Peek Are you ready to meet the next generation of Easy, Modern, and Powerful PCB design? Watch this live webinar to Watch Video

Follow Your Multilayer Ground Return Path to Prevent EMI

Follow Your Multilayer Ground Return Path to Prevent EMI Following the path back to ground can quickly become complex in a complicated multilayer PCB. When your PCB has a small layer count (e.g., a 4-layer board with two plane layers), it becomes rather easy to determine the return path and deliberately design it to prevent EMI. The situation becomes more complicated when you’re working with higher layer counts. Multiple plane layers and conductors can form the ground return path, even if the conductor Read Article

Push and Shove Router: How it Works and Why You Need It

Push and Shove Router: How it Works and Why You Need It If you have a complex layout like the one shown above, and you need to move traces or vias around the board, what can you do to decrease your routing time? This is where the push and shove router feature in Altium Designer can be a huge help. Using this feature eliminates the need to reroute a large number of unselected traces as you adjust traces and vias in your layout. So when would you need to use something like this? Doesn’t this interfere Read Article

Never Cross a Ground Plane Gap in High Speed PCB Design

Never Cross a Ground Plane Gap in High Speed PCB Design I often browse electronics and PCB forums, and I see the same question asked over and over: Why shouldn’t I route a trace over a split in my ground plane? This question gets asked by everyone from makers to professional designers who are just dipping their toes into high speed PCB design. For the professional signal integrity engineer, the answer should be obvious. Whether you’re a long-time PCB layout engineer or a casual designer, it helps to Read Article

Backplane Routing Topology

Backplane Routing Topology for Gigabit Copper and Fiber Networks Backplanes are the backbone of modular computing platforms, providing a fabric that interlinks pluggable daughtercards in a single system. The design of backplanes must support interfaces on the daughtercards, often at high data rates reaching multiple Gbps. Some standards also specify system design requirements that support RF or fiber integration into these systems. The RF and fiber portion is normally integrated through a specialized connector Read Article