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Current IssueProper Floor Planning
Floor planning decisions can make or break performance, manufacturability, and timelines. This month’s contributors weigh in with their best practices for proper floor planning and specific strategies to get it right.
Showing Some Constraint
A strong design constraint strategy carefully balances a wide range of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we explore the key requirements, common challenges, and best practices behind building an effective constraint strategy.
All About That Route
Most designers favor manual routing, but today's interactive autorouters may be changing designers' minds by allowing users more direct control. In this issue, our expert contributors discuss a variety of manual and autorouting strategies.
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Mentor Graphics Video: Automatically Unravel Complex FPGA Signals
December 2, 2015 | Mentor GraphicsEstimated reading time: Less than a minute
Optimizing large pin-count FPGAs is challenging. Manual optimization can take days and result in reduced quality.
This new video from Mentor Graphics shows how signal pin assignments can be automatically optimized between multiple FPGAs on the PCB while respecting pin-specific rules and constraints. Reduce the number of routing layers, minimize crossovers and overall trace lengths on the PCB, and reduce signal integrity issues for higher completion rates and shorter FPGA route times.
To watch this video, click here.
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Beyond Design: Effective Floor Planning Strategies
08/20/2025 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond DesignComponent placement on a printed circuit board is more involved than simply fitting parts into available space. It plays a pivotal role in determining the board’s overall manufacturability, performance, reliability, and cost. Poor placement can compromise even the most meticulously designed PCB. Effective component placement alleviates mechanical stress, promotes efficient thermal management, and helps prevent excessive heat buildup.
The Art and Science of PCB Floor Planning: A Comprehensive Guide
08/14/2025 | Cory Grunwald and Jeff Reinhold, Monsoon SolutionsPCB design is an intricate and crucial part of developing electronic products. One of the foundational stages of PCB design is floor planning, a phase where the placement of components and the flow of signals are meticulously mapped out. A good floor plan ensures that the PCB performs well, is easy to manufacture, and meets all mechanical and electrical requirements. We’ll explore the essential aspects of floor planning, from its objectives and process to the challenges that designers face.
Materials and Manufacturing for the AI Era: The Next PCB Frontier
08/08/2025 | Edy Yu, Chief Editor, ECIO, and the I-Connect007 Editorial TeamAI is pushing hardware to its limits, and the bottleneck isn’t design anymore—it’s materials. Next-generation AI servers aren’t just heavier on layer counts. They demand better materials to handle the speed, heat, and signal integrity requirements of 400G, 800G, and even 1.6T Ethernet systems. Many server motherboards are already 32–36 layers. For the next wave of 1.6T-capable boards, expect 40–50 layers, which must maintain high-frequency performance without degrading signal quality.
Beyond Design: Refining Design Constraints
07/17/2025 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond DesignBefore starting any project, it is crucial to develop a thorough plan that encompasses all essential requirements. This ensures that the final product not only aligns with the design concept but is also manufacturable, reliable, and meets performance expectations. High-speed PCB design requires us to not only push technological boundaries but also consider various factors related to higher frequencies, faster transition times, and increased bandwidths during the design process.
Why I Finally Embraced Autorouting
07/03/2025 | Stephen V. Chavez, Siemens EDAHere is a common misconception held by those who don’t fully understand the PCB layout process or how to wield today’s high-level EDA tools: "All I need to do is push the autorouter button, let the computer route all the signal traces, and get the layout 100% routed. It’s a no-brainer. Anyone can do it. It should take less than a few hours.”