Found a signal integrity problem in the lab? How do you go about fixing it? Well, if it’s a SERDES bus, you can’t do any kind of re-work because it will most likely kill the signal even more. Maybe you can play with some driver strength or pre-emphasis settings. Or is it a slower, parallel bus? Maybe you can re-work in some necessary termination. This is where post-layout SI simulation … Read More
Tags: post-layout, Pre-Layout, HyperLynx, Signal Integrity
Running at 6GHz is actually kind of scary regardless, but especially so with your eyes closed. And I mean that more figuratively than literally. Obviously, if your eye diagrams are closed on your serial links in your design there is cause for fear, but the fear of the unknown can be even greater, especially if you are running at multi-GHz speeds. That is where a complement of pre-layout and post-layout … Read More
Tags: HyperLynx, post-layout, 6GHz, SATA, Signal Integrity, Pre-Layout, SAS
It’s never too late to fix a design problem. Well, maybe if the product is shipping, that might be classified as “too late”. But during the design phase, whether you’ve laid out your board or not, it’s a good time to make sure there are no design issues. When it comes to signal integrity, that means performing pre-layout or post-layout simulations. I think most experts … Read More
Tags: post-layout, Pre-Layout, HyperLynx, Signal Integrity
At the very minimum, a good board stackup has solid reference planes for signal routing. Power demands now pretty much require that you have at least one power/ground sandwich in your stackup as well. Ideally, you would have all the power and ground planes on the top layers in a big PWR-GND-PWR-GND alternating “Big Mac” where they were nice and close to the ICs and all the caps were mounted … Read More
Tags: HyperLynx, Power Integrity, Decoupling, Signal Integrity, stackup
Proper stackup design is the key to ensuring maximum performance for your PCB design. Electromagnetic compatibility, signal integrity, power integrity - even proper thermal performance - can all be ensured with the proper stackup design. Given the high route density of most boards nowadays, you try to pack as many routing layers as possible into a given thickness. For most large-scale consumer products, … Read More
Tags: Expedition, HyperLynx, EMC, Signal Integrity, stackup, layers, Power Integrity
The Aberdeen Group conducted a survey of 536 electronics company management types to determine what business results (time-to-market, product cost and competitiveness, quality, … ) qualified them as “Best-in-Class” status. They then matched those BiC companies with common PCB design best practices that they had identified to help bring them to that status.
Highlighted as the 3 top … Read More
Tags: design concurrency, Collaboration, Signal Integrity, Thermal Analysis, Expedition
We’re finally on to the next logical step in our study of signal integrity - impedance. So what is impedance and why does it matter?
Impedance is a result of the physical properties that make up your PCB and the reason you care about this is because the impedance of your traces will have an impact on the signal quality. If you remember from Part 2 of this series on transmission lines, I talked about … Read More
Tags: impedance, Signal Integrity, HyperLynx, stackup
A couple of weeks ago, two things happened. First, I changed television/Internet suppliers. Second, AT&T, who had initiated flat-rate service for both voice and data on their cell network, stopped taking orders for the data portion.
So, how do these items go together, and how am I going to tie this to a Mentor product? Here’s the answer to the first question; I hope to figure out how I’m going to … Read More
Tags: HyperLynx, Signal Integrity, IE3D, high speed design, fast networks, Power Integrity, AT&T
In one of my first blog posts I wrote about PCB Designers being the “unsung heroes of innovation.” After spending a week in Israel and visiting PCB Fabricators and Assemblers, I am even more convinced of the complexity of the PCB Development process. The cycle of complexity is accelerating - we see this amongst our customers in our annual Technology Leadership Awards and we see this day in and day out … Read More
Tags: Design Collaboration, Design for Manufacture, Aberdeen, Signal Integrity
Break out your calculators boys and girls because it’s math time (well….maybe you won’t need them after you get to the bottom of this post, but it’s fun to dust them off every now and then). The second part of this fundamentals series is going to talk about transmission lines and what exactly is a transmission line and how does it relate to a critical net (from Part 1)
Back in the good ole’ days, … Read More
Tags: trace delay, velocity of propagation, delay, dielectric constant, critical length, Quick Tour, Signal Integrity, Edge Rate, HyperLynx
