Layout & Routing

Early use of design for manufacturing can capture PCB yield issues related to pads, copper distribution, same net slivers and more

Speeding up electronics design by learning lessons in increasing parallelism from computer science.

Advanced PCB and IC technologies have to be matched with advanced design and analysis tools if companies are going to produce board designs that are right first time, on time.

Length matching within a differential pair can be one of the more tedious tasks facing a PCB designer. This article describes how a team at communications and consumer electronics semiconductor company Broadcom overcame this by using the automation options available within their design tools. While the article describes automation tailored to a specific task, the [...]

This special edition of EDA Tech Forum Journal concentrates on PCB design. It’s an exciting area technologically right now, and we hope that the editorial content reflects that. One theme that kept emerging was that many of the contributors believe their discipline is at some sort of tipping point. And these changes don’t just come [...]

Emerging technologies and markets could spur PCB tool growth despite economic concerns, says Mary Ann Olsson The worldwide PCB EDA software market maintained fairly stable 3.4% growth in 2007. Sales reached $532.5M, from $514.7M in 2006. The projected growth rate for PCB software in 2008 is 2.3%, bringing sales to $544.7M (Figure 1). One key [...]

What impact do HDI via structures have on PCB design metrics? Andy Kowalewski describes a recent experiment. A PCB’s density has traditionally been seen as a function of the trace and space geometry and the number of signal layers. Emerging technologies such as microvias and buildup fabrication may force us to rethink this formula. In [...]

New PCB tools have the intelligence to cut time and cost, explains Mark Forbes As far back as Marconi himself, RF design has been seen as having a touch of magic associated with it. Designs that looked just fine on paper would often require empirical tweaks to make them work properly. Until recently, even circuits [...]

OSMOSIS is a super-fast optical switch developed through the Advanced Simulation and Computing program. The article describes the strategies adopted by the IBM team charged with designing the Central Scheduler board for the project. The design was of a far greater complexity than the team had previously encountered, and as a result, developed new pre-preparation [...]

The 17th annual PCB West Conference and Exhibition takes place this year at the Santa Clara Marriott, September 14-19. For 2008, the conference’s theme is “Grow your knowledge in the heart of Silicon Valley.” This is an approach intended to reflect some of the obvious hot button issues in board design (e.g., high-speed, lead-free, etc.) [...]