Eric Bogatin, Signal Integrity Journal Technical Editor

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We usually associate problems with the power distribution network (PDN) as from excess VRM noise, or from transient current draw from the core or I/O drivers. But that’s not the only source of PDN noise. Some failures can arise from dull, boring, mundane problems at DC.

Eric Bogatin reviews a presentation by Terence Regan, and shares his thoughts on the topic of high-performance interconnect design and fabrication.

No matter how well you understand the design principles, and no matter how much experience you have in designing boards, it’s easy for some problems to slip through the cracks because you just forgot to check that feature, or your design is just too big to manually check. This is where a design rule checker comes in.

At DesignCon 2018, the IEEE P370 standards group announced the release of two important tools to assist all engineers for de-embedding. In the presentation by Jason Ellison and Heidi Barnes, “A NIST Traceable PCB Kit for Evaluating the Accuracy of De-Embedding Algorithms and Corresponding Metrics”, the two new tools were announced, a board kit and a de-embedding software tool.

The IEEE P370 standards group was formed over four years ago to draft a standard for the Electrical Characterization of PCB interconnects up to 50 GHz. On Monday, Jan 30, 2018, more than 30 engineers attended the organization’s first “plug fest” at the Santa Clara Convention Center to exercise some of the features of the proposed standard.

Blando’s presentation illustrates the value of never accepting a result if it is not consistent with your engineering judgement. The determination of Blando’s team to resolve this simple problem benefits all of us to enable better differential pair measurements.

In our first electrical engineering class, we learn that the voltage across an inductor is L di/dt. We are ingrained with the idea that the voltage across an inductor is generated by the changing current through it. Not so, says Larry Smith, industry Power Integrity expert from Qualcomm and member of the SIJ EAB.

I’ve been attending and presenting at DesignCon for 28 years since the first HP High Speed Digital Symposium. And every year, it’s been the same thing, overloaded with too many great talks, too many companies’ latest products to see and too many online friends to finally meet in person. The only thing that has changed is the “too many” part. Needless to say, the many part has only increased.

A Unique Hands-on Opportunity to Characterize Interconnects to 50 GHz, sponsored by the IEEE P370 Standards group and Samtec.

We’ve come to the end of our first complete year of online publication. Our Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) has done a superb job of nudging us in the right direction, contributing high value technical pieces and reviewing all the technical content submitted to the Signal Integrity Journal. As a final passing favor to the SI, PI and EMC community of readers, we want to leave all of our readers with a year-end holiday gift.