High Speed PCB Design Introduction

If, like me, you come from a firmware background you probably prefer to think of digital electronics as on and off or high and low; those on and off signals travelling instantaneously and reliably through the electrical circuitry. Binary, instant and reliable. Certainly from a programmer’s viewpoint, this level of abstraction is assumed at the software level!Working with faster and faster electronics however, as clock speeds move from the MHz to the GHz, it becomes obvious that things are just not that simple. In this article we will look at some of the factors which make high-speed design more complex, as well as some of the techniques used to address them.