High-Speed PCB Design
As a technology leader in PCB design, High-Speed, Signal Integrity and EMC, Zuken understands your development challenges. And with the High-Speed PCB Design (formally Advanced Engineering Services) Zuken provides products and services to help you to meet them.
No matter where you need help in the high-speed design process, no matter how complex your design, Zuken complements your capability by taking on the design issues that impact you the most. And we've structured our offerings to match how and where you need it. Our staff of highly qualified EDA experts are available to assist with the technical aspects of customers' high-speed design challenges. If needed, our consulting services take you from initial technical problem assessment to final benefit analysis and full implementation in between.
What is High-Speed Design?
Due to the high speeds of nearly all electronic designs in modern technologies, the physical characteristics of the design-implementation (PCBs, packages, interconnects, etc.) contribute to the behavior of the circuits just as much as the parts of the electrical design that are included in the schematic. Non-intended and non-ideal characteristics such as transmission-line propagation, delay, attenuation, dispersion, finite impedance of the conductors, metal planes and power-supply structures, discontinuities due to imperfect interconnects such as power and ground inductance, properties of the connectors and selected pin out, unintended current-paths, crosstalk, emission and immunity are some of the factors that must be considered during design.
These characteristics are not included in the schematics, yet they play a significant role in the circuit performance. If not seriously considered they will lead to problems with signal-integrity (SI) and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).
Being an integral part of the physical implementation of the electrical design, these characteristics are directly influenced by the board-level and system-level features such as PCB material, size and stackup, placement of the components, decoupling and bypassing, routing topology, motherboard-daughterboard configuration, connectors, grounding etc. Therefore they must be addressed and taken care of during transition from the schematic to the PCB and system level.
Hence, a "High-Speed Design" is not characterized by its clock speed but is due to the very fast switching devices it contains and the subsequent high-speed effects in the printed circuit boards - which makes understanding and addressing such issues mandatory for today's and tomorrow's challenges in PCB design.
Why is understanding high-speed important?
As high-speed finds its way onto every designer's desk, not addressing it properly will lead to the danger of:
- increased time to market and budget overruns
- problems in achieving the full time to volume potential
- board turns due to longer transmission line delays, crosstalk, overshoot and ringing
- over defensive design rather than a real exploration of the design limits
- increased radiated emissions caused by costly and time consuming EMC test and certification sessions.
With the Zuken high-speed solution, the emphasis is put on solving the problem cost effectively and early in the design process (design right-first-time) rather then the traditional 'find it-fix it' problem solving strategy.
Overview of Services Offered
Zuken's high-speed design consulting covers several aspects, including Signal Integrity on PCBs, EMI related radiation effects in near and far field for PCBs or selected PCB substructures. Other services available include device modeling and specific high-speed design training courses.
Signal Integrity (SI) is one of the key factors in achieving optimum board/system performance and is a main concern in today's high-speed designs.
EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) is the term to describe the interaction of electrical and electronic equipment with its electromagnetic (EM) environment and with other equipment.
Zuken's Modeling Services contains information on IBIS Models and modeling as well as free downloads of several IBIS tools, presentations, white papers and other documents relating to IBIS issues.