Technology

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

PCB Design for Radio-Over-Fiber Technology It’s possible that radio-over-fiber technology is one of the least discussed aspects of fiber telecom networks. However, it stands to be one of the many portions of telecom infrastructure for bringing broadband wireless access to remote areas. This approach is likely to play a major role for future 5G infrastructure in rural areas where a standard wireless backhaul is not possible or cost-prohibitive. Just like any other electronic system, radio Read Article

Important Thermal Properties of PCB Substrate Materials Signal integrity isn’t the full story, the thermal properties of your PCB substrate materials are also important for reliability. Read Article

Exploring Arduino is Now Expanded and Updated by Jeremy Blum The Altium OnTrack Podcast with Judy Warner welcomes one of the Hardware design community’s brightest stars, Jeremy Blum. Jeremy recently released a new version of his book that is a heavily expanded and updated edition. Exploring Arduino, has helped people around the world and now you can get a completely up-to-date version, which you can buy now. Jeremy is a two-time AltiumLive keynote speaker and has also been featured on this podcast twice Read Article

Leveraging the Ecosystem Being a great designer requires discipline. Most designers love to create, and design is an end in and of itself. This is fine when you design as a hobby. After all, the point isn’t getting the project done more than it is to enjoy oneself. When you design as a business, this all changes. Usually there’s some sort of clock ticking, like you only have so much money saved up before your business needs to start generating some income to pay for Read Article

Using Low-Volume Runs to Eliminate High-Volume Failures “High volume” is a relative term. It depends upon what your business does and how many of a product you plan to sell. For one OEM, a minimum initial run might be 250K units. For another, 10K is the expected run of a product across its entire market life. One way to consider “high volume” is that it’s large enough to hurt your business if you make a mistake. Put another way, high volume is high risk. And given the stakes, you want to minimize this Read Article

The Evolution Of Automotive Electronics The number, functionality, and complexity of today’s automotive electronics has grown beyond leaps and bounds over the past several years. Certainly, the flagship of this technology is the Tesla automobile. But, even for those of us who can’t afford a Tesla, there is an increasingly widespread utilization of this technology in mid-range and even lower-end new cars. This article will describe the design environment represented by this technology Read Article

DDR5 PCB Design and Signal Integrity: What Designers Need to Know Development of the world’s first DDR5 RAM was announced just 1 year ago, with peak speed of 5200 MT/sec/pin (compare that to 3200 MT/sec/pin with DDR4) at 1.1 V. Full-scale production is set to begin in 2020, and demand for this new generation of memories with 8, 16, and 32 GB capacities will quickly outpace that for earlier generations. JEDEC rates DDR5 speeds up to 6400 MT/sec/pin, with bandwidth increased up to 300 GB/s. The faster speeds Read Article

Linux and Android: What’s the Difference When purchasing an off-the-shelf module or designing a customized module of your own using a design tool like Geppetto, you have to select an operating system. Often, you have a variety of choices. Two popular open source software (OSS) platforms are Linux and Android. If you’re new to design, how do you know which one you want to use? There are complicated, highly technical answers to this question. However, if you are like many designers, you Read Article

Open Source Software - A Moving Target Open Source Software (OSS) is an attractive alternative to proprietary software platforms. There’s a lot to love about OSS. Lower cost is a primary decision driver for many companies. Others want to enjoy the freedom and flexibility to modify the software to their particular application requirements. Some companies don’t want to be at the mercy of the direction—or lack of direction—of proprietary software roadmaps. There’s also a lot to fret over Read Article

Wearable AI Voice Recorder Is Shipping Use a Senstone and never miss a flash of creative genius again (Image source: Senstone.com) Were you ever a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG)? If so, you may recall that the Starfleet officers and enlisted personnel wear small communicator badges on their left breast. These devices are presented in the shape of the Starfleet insignia and are activated with a light tap. They also incorporate a universal translator, which comes in handy Read Article

Optimizing Power Consumption Power efficiency—energy efficiency if you’re a purist—has become perhaps the highest-profile aspect of system design. This is especially true for IoT applications where a device may need to operate for years on harvested energy or a cell battery. Thus, a critical stage of design is power optimization. Typically, the first stage of power optimization is setting the power budget. For example, the system spec might state that the device has to be Read Article

Continuous Manufacturing Volume As a manufacturing term, it can mean different things, depending upon the industry. Volume production for an automotive OEM means hundreds of thousands of units. For an industrial CNC manufacturer, lifetime sales over decades might be in the tens of thousands. For many small design companies, producing even “low” volumes may be a manufacturing challenge. It takes success to be able to invest in infrastructure that supports higher volumes Read Article

MIPI Physical Layer Routing and Signal Integrity MIPI physical layer routing (C-PHY) is typically used to connect these smartphone cameras to a processor. When most designers talk about routing standards, particularly for advanced devices, they typically refer to differential routing standards (e.g., LVDS) that enable high data rates. These signaling standards have proliferated computers, networking equipment, smart electronics, and other areas, and they have been critical for operating with Read Article

Webinar on XR | Think AR on Steroids Making the business case for XR (Image source: XR Intelligence) Do you remember when the internet first reached the popular consciousness with the release of the MOSAIC web browser circa 1993? A couple of years later, even though almost everyone was aware of the internet by that time, many companies -- including large, multibillion-dollar concerns -- were still debating internally whether it was worth spending their time and resources on having Read Article

8-Bit Micros are Alive and Kicking The NUCLEO-8S207K8 board boasts a 32-pin STM8S207K8 MCU (Image source: STMicroelectronics) I just heard from the guys and gals at STMicroelectronics (ST) that they are "making design starts using 8-bit STM8 microcontrollers (MCUs) faster, more affordable, and more accessible for creative minds of all types by introducing new development boards in the easy-to-use Nucleo-32 form factor." We will return to consider these little rascals in a moment Read Article

A Retro-Computing Christmas Sinclair 48K ZX Spectrum computer (1982) (Image source: Bill Bertram/Wikipedia) It's starting to look a lot like (a retro-computing) Christmas. I understand why many younger readers cannot imagine a world before today's incredibly powerful computing and gaming systems with their high-resolution graphics subsystems. We all enjoy these systems, but those of us who are more... let's say "seasoned"… remember the raw excitement we felt just to own any Read Article

Geeky Holiday Gift Ideas The holiday season is coming! I asked both the Altium community and my Altium Library community what geek gifts they are looking for, and I’ve added some of my own for the first ever Altium Geek Gift Guide! This is mostly for electronics geeks, but there should be something for everyone! There are so many amazing geek gifts out there it would be impossible to cover them all, so I’ve tried to keep to community suggestions. I then added just a few Read Article