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Suggested Items

Signal Integrity: A Game of Margins

09/25/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy, Design007 Magazine
As the founder of Wild River Technology, Al Neves deals with some of the most challenging aspects of signal integrity. Wild River’s engineers consult with high-tech companies that work at very high speeds and frequencies, often above 100G. Al is always a fun interview, so we asked him to share his thoughts on the current state of signal integrity engineering.

Beyond Design: Key SI Considerations for High-speed PCB Design

03/20/2025 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond Design
Over the past two decades, I've simulated numerous complex, high-speed designs for customers creating computer-based products. In addition, I've conducted signal integrity software training courses and led classes on high-speed design. In this month’s column, I will reflect on the key considerations for achieving a successful high-speed PCB design that performs reliably, and I’ll highlight some of the common signal integrity issues that I frequently encounter.

Don’t Rush: Get ‘Acclimated’ With Each Level of SI

02/27/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy, I-Connect007
During DesignCon, I met with Al Neves, the founder of Wild River Technology, and a serious fly fisherman as well. As Al explains, some engineers are getting ahead of themselves by rushing to take on complex SI challenges before they’ve mastered their foundational knowledge. Like climbers on Mount Everest, these engineers need to spend more time getting “acclimated” at base camp before heading for the summit.

Beyond Design: High-speed Rules of Thumb

11/21/2024 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond Design
The 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.

Beyond Design: Just a Matter of Time

11/21/2023 | Barry Olney -- Column: Beyond Design
Electromagnetic energy propagates at about half the speed of light within the dielectric of a multilayer PCB. This speed is inversely proportional to the square root of the dielectric constant (Dk) of the material. The lower the Dk, the faster the propagation of the wave. In the past, we ignored the board-level delay as it was relatively instantaneous compared to the slow rise time of the signal waveform. But now that we have entered the realm of Gigabit/s design, an unaccounted 10 ps of delay can mean the difference between success and absolute failure of a high-speed design. Also, the trend is toward lower core voltages, which conserves power. However, reducing the core voltage also reduces the noise margin and impacts the system timing budget.
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