Technology

Browse our library of resources to learn more about new technology used in pcb design.

Best DC Laboratory Bench Power Supplies of 2021

Best DC Laboratory Bench Power Supplies of 2021 A guide to workbench power supplies, related requirements, technological tradeoffs, and recommended brands and models. Read Article

When Should You Use a Flex Circuit?

When Should You Use Flexible Printed Circuit Cables? The two predominant reasons for using flex or rigid flex, are to solve a packaging issue or reduce the space and weight of the electronics package. These two are often interrelated and space, weight and packaging, (SWaP) will continue to be a driving force in PCB design. Read Article

2020 Holiday Gift Ideas for Your Favorite Engineer

2020 Holiday Gift Ideas for An Engineer Check out our list of the best holiday gifts for engineers in 2020. Read Article

How Multifunctional Hardware Teams Can Collaborate

IoT PCB Design: It's More Than Just Hardware Development Altium 365 makes IoT PCB design and coding easy. Share your designs, control revisions, and fork projects directly in Altium Designer or through Altium Concord Pro. Read Article

PCB manufacturing trends interview

PCB Manufacturer Trends and Challenges with Summit Interconnect Learn more about PCB manufacturing trends from Clay Swain, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and Gerry Partida, Senior Field Applications Engineer. Read Article

Power Integrity for EDA Tools

Heidi Barnes, Senior Application Engineer and Power Integrity Product Owner Heidi Barnes is an anomaly in the PCB design world—a long-time, senior-level woman, and hardware engineer, whose career has been steeped in a wide variety of experiences with numerous technologies. Within the industry, she is widely recognized for her knowledge and expertise. Heidi holds five patents, was awarded the NASA Silver Snoopy for her work on hydrogen fire and gas detection, she is the author of over 20 papers on signal integrity and Read Article

Chip for the most powerful quantum computer 2020

Honeywell Claims the Most Powerful Analog Quantum Computer of 2020 Quantum computing is about more than qubit count. See why Honeywell claims to have the most powerful quantum computer of 2020. Read Article

Creating a Ground Plane for Your PCB Design

Creating a Ground Plane for Your PCB Design It used to be that printed circuit boards seemed to have the same basic layer configuration, or at least that’s the way I tend to remember it. This meant that they were usually six-layer multi-layer boards, with a ground plane and a VCC plane. The old CAD systems didn’t really have the ability to do much with Altium power planes except to designate layers as a bottom layer or the like. The most you would see in them would be some “X’s” where Read Article

Ground bounce in your PCB and ground bounce in signal integrity

Ground Bounce Reduction Techniques to Minimize Signal Integrity Issues Unlike my dad who thrived on the basketball team during his school days, I could barely bounce the ball during tryouts. Needless to say, I quit sports before I even started. While my dreams of becoming an NBA pro were dashed, I later discovered my passion for martial arts. I never really got into handling a basketball well, but in martial arts at least I could bounce off the balls of my feet to meet my opponent. Not being able to bounce the Read Article

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Active and Passive RFID Technologies

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Active and Passive RFID Technologies When I’m designing a new PCB or product one of the hardest parts for me is choosing exactly which components I should use. It seems like every technology out there now has a different configuration to achieve the best performance. Even when you’re dealing with a fairly straightforward technology like radio frequency identification (RFID) circuit board there are a lot of flavors to choose from. While every type of RFID design label uses an active Read Article

Optical PHY PCB Layout for Gigabit and Faster Ethernet

Optical PHY PCB Layout for 100 Gigabit and Faster Ethernet Need to layout a board to connect to an optical PHY transceiver? Here are some high speed design aspects you’ll need to consider. Read Article

Advantages of Flexible Circuits for Space Applications

Advantages of Flexible Circuits for Space Applications Flexible circuits reduce weight in spacecraft and can be used in enclosures where there is minimal available space. Read Article

Substrate-Like PCBs

Substrate-Like PCBs Push the Limits of HDI A substrate-like PCB looks similar to an HDI PCB and similar to an IC substrate. Read this article to learn about substrate-like PCBs. Read Article

Embedded AI

The Path Forward for Embedded AI In April 2021, I published an article in Printed Circuit Design & Fab, where I proclaimed the future of AI is embedded. In short, my view is that embedded systems will leverage greater usage of AI on the end device, meaning they will rely less on cloud platforms or data centers for inference. Without a doubt, I believe the future of AI is still embedded, but not with the chipset or system architecture I would have thought. At the time of writing Read Article

Cellular V2X Communication

Designing for V2X Communication: Wireless Protocols and Standards Take your vehicle’s connectivity to the next level with V2X communication standards. Designing these systems may be easier than you think. Read Article

5G phased array

Phased Array Antenna Design for 5G Applications As the 5G rollout progresses and researchers continue to discuss 6G, many new 5G-capable products operating in sub-GHz and mmWave bands are reaching the marketplace. Devices that will include a 5G-compatible front-end, whether small stations/repeaters or handheld devices, use phased arrays as high-gain antenna systems to provide high data throughput without losing range at higher frequencies. The earliest type of phased array antenna was Read Article

Hardware-Software Co-design

What's in a Hardware-Software Co-design Process Product development spans across multiple domains, including hardware and software. A co-design process for your hardware and software helps ensure your success. Read Article