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What is This Material Called FR-4?

Within the PCB industry, FR-4 materials have long been accepted as “standard” materials. However, their use was not specific to the types of board being designed. For today’s high-speed, high-frequency designs, careful engineering and material selection relative to the resin systems and glass weave styles needed will ensure that a product will work as specified, as designed, and as manufactured. In addition, the finish of the copper used in the signal and power layers also needs to be controlled in order to ensure that loss goals are met.


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DesignCon 2024 Review - 224G Systems

DesignCon is the premier high-speed communications and system design conference and exposition, offering industry-critical engineering education in the heart of Silicon Valley. Every year, there are several new hot technologies that are featured by exhibitors. For DesignCon 2024, it was all about 224G systems.


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The Challenge of Measuring a 40 µΩ (2000 Amp) PDN with a 2-Port Probe: The Measurement Result with Another VNA

In the final installment of this blog series, Benjamin Dannan, Heidi Barnes, and Steve Sandler continue their discussion of how to calculate the minimum CMRR with a PDN impedance measurement using a 2-port probe, demonstrating how to measure a sub-40 µΩ impedance when using an isolator that has sufficient CMRR using two different VNAs, the Bode 100 and E5061B. Achieving sub-40 µΩ impedance measurements is challenging, but completely realistic with the proper test equipment. 


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