Welcome to pcb-update vol. 10-2011 – “Waiting for Santa”

Years end is always a busy time in a company. It is a time to look back to see if you reached the goals you aimed for and a time to look ahead and set new goals for the future. This sounds easy but with the financial climate we are seeing these days, there are many factors and parameters to take into consideration.

In the US the overall financial situation is critical. In Europe the Mediterranean countries have different levels of financial problems lead by the Greek but with Italy, Spain and Portugal as close runner-ups.

To implement these factors into next years budget and try to predict the best case and worst case scenarios influence on these numbers and come up with a realistic estimate for 2012 is not an easy task. So my guess is that the financial guys will be sweating the coming weeks.

December is usually also a very busy month in the PCB design departments all over the world. December typically marks the deadline for this years designs, so you often find that the temperature runs high in the period up to Christmas.

The search of ways to cut design cycle times is omnipresent at all levels in the companies and newer stops.

As this is a double holiday feature there are two articles this month. The articles ­could be a step in the right direction and help you to improve your design practices and to reduce the number of design spins which in the end will improve your bottom line numbers.

Article no. 1: “Intelligent Design” -
Managing the Tradeoff Between PCB Cost and Signal Quality at 10 Gigabits per Second Data Rates

Lee Ritchey needs no further introduction as he should be well-known to you as a regular subscriber to puc. In this little article Lee Ritchey will examine how the method used to route a 10 gigabit per second data signal can affect quality. It is a short but very educating article. It is listed at Lee's website: www.Speedingedge.com and you can access it via this link:

http://www.speedingedge.com/PDF-Files/Routing10GSignals.pdf

Article 2: “Tutorial Overview of Signal Integrity and EMI”

This tutorial is written by Terry Fox, Terry Fox & Associates, who has been in the PCB business since 1969 where he started as an electronic instrument field engineer at HP. In 1993 he turned towards SI and EMI and has worked as a consultant in this field since then and build a vast knowledge about the subject, working with and helping companies reducing design spins to shorten delivery times.

The tutorial is very complex and should give you plenty of reading during the holidays and a lot of tips of how to handle SI and EMI. The tuturial is found on his website www.siemc.com via this link:

http://www.siemc.com/tutorial.htm

I'll take this opportunity to wish you and your families a Merry Christmas and a safe and fun 2012 and I will see you in February 2012.

Mike Dyrberg
pcb-update.com^®