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"It Is Vanity to Do With More That Which Can Be Done With Less" September 2007 The mantra of the electronics packaging industry used to be “faster, denser, cheaper, NOW!” These driving forces fueled the development and introduction of the five most important packaging technology revolutions of the last 10 years. |
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Don't Breathe Too Hard August 2007 High-speed serial links are fragile. You have to worry about tiny vias that might make up less than 1 percent of the total path length. You have to worry about the size, shape, and orientation of the glass weave in the laminate. You have to worry about the surface roughness of the copper. You have to worry about the size and location of the via clearance holes in the copper planes near the connectors. All of these delicate adjustments must be just right for a successful design. Now there’s a new worry. |
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The Shape of Things to Come? July 2007 “200 million flat screen TVs are expected to be sold in the next few years,” Fred Martin, Director of R&D for the Flatwire Technologies Division of Southwire says. “The new paradigm is that the flat screen TV is on the wall and the audio, video, and game box equipment is in another corner of the room.” Who wants unsightly, bulky cables routing around your living room or family room connecting all the electronic boxes that proliferate in the home? |
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Got 12 Ports? June 2007 |
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Embrace Innovation to Survive May 2007 |
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Weave and Skew April 2007 |
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16 EMC Rules March 2007 More than 10 years ago, the Electromagnetic Compatibility Lab (EMC) at the University of Missouri at Rolla (UMR) developed a set of board-level design rules that, if followed, maximize the chance of a product passing an EMC certification test. |
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Moving Toward the Transparent Connector February 2007 The higher the bit rate, the more problems connectors introduce. This article describes two technology options that may offer building blocks that can shift the connector design paradigm from pin-in-box to pad-to-pad and approach an electrically transparent connector. |
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Automated TDR Testing January 2007 What do you get when you cross precision time domain reflectometry (TDR), high bandwidth microprobes, and a CAD database-driven, multi-head flying prober? Answer: You get the Introbotics Automated Controlled Impedance Tester. |
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"So, What Do You Do?" December 2006 It’s the holiday season and with it comes the obligatory family gatherings and community parties. There’s that moment of dread you know you will face. You are standing by the eggnog bowl, you turn your back for just an instant, and your spouse disappears, leaving you defenseless. |
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Need High-Speed Network Testing? Who You Gonna Call? November 2006 "We are the Switzerland of the networking industry," says Andy Baldman, member of the senior technical staff at the InterOperability Lab at the University of New Hampshire (www.iol.unh.edu). |
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Are Guard Traces Worth It? October 2006 The board is finally back from fab. You power it on for the first time and find your sensitive LVDS line has 30 mV too much noise, and its coming from a CMOS level control line running at 3.3v. The noise is only 1% of the control line voltage, but... |
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Differential S Parameters: The New Universal Standard for Interconnects September 2006 All high-speed serial interconnect standards, such as those used in 10-Gigabit Attachment Unit Interface (XAUI), SATA, PCI-X, or InfiniBand systems, leverage differential signaling and are designed for routing on differential pairs. |
