Beyond Design: High-speed Rules of Thumb
Global PCB Connections: A Technical Overview of Long-flex Printed Circuit Boards
The Shaughnessy Report: A Handy Look at Rules of Thumb
Just Ask Heidi: Is Power Integrity the Hot Discipline of the Future?
December 28, 2020 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamEstimated reading time: 1 minute
First, we asked you to send in your questions for Happy Holden, Joe Fjelstad, Eric Camden, John Mitchell, and Tara Dunn in our “Just Ask” series. Now, it’s Heidi Barnes’s turn! Heidi is a senior signal and power integrity engineer at Keysight Technologies. She has written over 20 papers on SI and PI, and she is an active member in developing the new IEEE P370 standard involving interconnect S-parameter quality after fixture removal. Heidi has been awarded five patents and a NASA Silver Snoopy award (each Silver Snoopy pin flies on a space mission first), and she was named DesignCon's 2017 Engineer of the Year. We hope you enjoy “Just Ask Heidi.”
Q: In the future, what EE disciplines (SI, PI, EMC, etc.) are going to be the most in demand?
A: I am partial to power integrity (PI) because I am now 100% invested as the power integrity product owner for Keysight’s PathWave PI solutions. Signal integrity (SI) is challenging, but even SI needs PI to work. PI is the foundation, and to still find so many conflicting design rules and industry arguments on best practices makes it likely that we will see a growing demand for PI engineers to define best practices and better standardize the industry.
I also like to have an ideal approach to EMC that says if one does the SI correctly so that all Tx power goes to the Rx, and if one does PI correctly and the power delivery is matched to the load, then there should not be any energy going into EMI/EMC. This is rather simplistic, but it does highlight the benefit of good PI and SI designs to reduce the need for additional hardware to mitigate EMC problems.
To submit your questions for Heidi, click here.
Share on:
Suggested Items
Beyond Design: High-speed Rules of Thumb
11/21/2024 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond DesignThe idiom “rule of thumb” is often used in electronics design and has its origins in the practice of measuring roughly with one’s thumb. Rules of thumb are easy-to-remember, broadly accurate guides or principles based on practice rather than theory. They are used to help feed our intuition to find a quick solution based on experience. We are often forced to use rules of thumb in PCB design in the absence of expensive analysis tools. We also use them to get quick ballpark figures initially and then fine-tune the numbers with further analysis. We can use rules of thumb as a sanity check to assess whether we are using our tools correctly. In this month’s column, I will present some commonly used and helpful rules for high-speed PCB design.
Material Insight: David Griesel: Career Success Requires Tenacity, Flexibility
10/23/2024 | Dr. Preeya Kuray -- Column: Material InsightDavid Griesel, CEO of Sunrise Group, has been in the PCB industry for nearly 50 years. “I didn’t even have a desk when I started,” says David, who, as a fresh college graduate, got his start at Norplex, a company in Wisconsin that made plastic. “At that time, I had no idea what plastic was even about.” But it gave him an opportunity to learn the business from the ground up. He worked in customer service, followed by technical sales and marketing through several iterations of the company, including as Isola. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview with David as much as I did.
FIT Hon Teng Showcases AI Data Center Connectivity and Immersion-Cooled Signal Integrity Solutions at OCP Global Summit 2024
10/21/2024 | FoxconnFIT Hon Teng, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry, will unveil its latest advancements in AI data center connectivity and immersion-cooling technologies at the upcoming 2024 OCP Global Summit.
Elementary, Mr. Watson: The Gooey Centers of Hybrid PCB Designs
10/09/2024 | John Watson -- Column: Elementary, Mr. WatsonAnyone who knows me knows that I have a special relationship with food. Taking a twist on the words of Will Rogers, "I never met a buffet I didn't like." A balanced diet, to me, means having cupcakes in both hands. One of my favorite foods is cheeseburgers. One of my colleagues at Palomar College recently invited me out for a meal, and we ended up in a burger place in San Diego. I wanted to go the conventional and safe route: a double-patty cheeseburger. My friend insisted that I try the restaurant’s special: a peanut butter cheeseburger. “Really?” I told him. “What an interesting combination.” But he insisted I try it, and since I consider myself an adventurous person, I gave it a go.
Stringent High-speed Requirements Pose Technology Challenges
10/03/2024 | Tarja Rapala and Joe Beers, iNEMIThe ever-increasing demands on printed circuit boards to satisfy the needs of tomorrow’s products means that PCB manufacturers must continuously evolve and react to a wide variety of technological and market requirements such as: Functional density: Finer features, higher density, and increased layers; signal integrity: Higher frequencies, driven by higher data transfer speeds and increased data needs; material properties refinement: Must meet performance as well as environmental demands; Smart manufacturing: Automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and machine learning are all part of the future PCB manufacturing floor; and time-to-market: Increased urgency to facilitate new design implementation, product introduction and qualification, quicker market differentiation, and survival.