The importance of PCB design in electronic design

In electronic design, the PCB is the physical carrier of our design content, 1oz vs 2oz and all of our design intentions are to achieve the final expression thr...

Nov 24,2023 | Jessica

In electronic design, the PCB is the physical carrier of our design content, 1oz vs 2oz and all of our design intentions are to achieve the final expression through the PCB board. Therefore, PCB design is an indispensable part of any project.

But in the previous design, because the frequency is very low, the density is very small, the distance between the devices is very large, so the PCB design work is for connectivity, without any other functional and performance challenges. So for a long time, PCB design had a very low status in the overall project. Usually, the physical connection of the PCB is carried out by the hardware logic connection designer. At present, this is still the development model for some small products.

With the rapid economic development of China's electronic and communication network technology, today's PCB design enterprises are already facing completely different and new challenges. It is mainly manifested in the following problems:

1. Signal edge rates are getting faster, clock rates on and off the chip are getting higher, and now clock rates are no longer a few megabytes, how to test a circuit board with a multimeter hundreds of megabytes of clocks are becoming more common on boards. Due to the rapid development of chip technology, the edge rate of the signal is also getting faster and faster, and the edge of the signal is currently rising at about 1NS. This will lead to system and board level SI, EMC problems more prominent;

2. The scale of circuit integration is getting larger and larger, and the number of is increasing, which makes the density of single board interconnection increase continuously; As the function becomes more and more powerful, the circuit becomes more and more integrated. The level of chip processing technology is getting higher and higher. The DIP packages of the past have almost disappeared on today's boards, and small-pitch BGA and QFP have become the mainstream packages for chips. This increases the density of PCB designs.

3. With less and less time to develop and get to market, we must face the serious challenge of successful one-time design: time is cost and time is money. In electronics, it was such a rapid change that his window of profit opportunity would be much larger, a day earlier.

4. Because PCB is the physical carrier of product realization. In high-speed circuits, the quality of PCB is related to the function and performance of the product. The same device and connection, different PCB carriers, their results are not the same.

So, now our design process has been slowly changing. In the past, the design of logic system functions often accounted for more than 80% of the design of the hardware resource development environment, but now the proportion of this problem has been declining, and the logic control function can be designed and studied in the current hardware structure design only accounts for 50%, and the PCB design part also accounts for 50% of the time. Experts expect that in future designs, the cost of hardware logic analysis functions will become smaller and smaller, and the cost of developing high-speed PCB design technologies such as product design work rules will reach 80% or more.

All this shows that PCB design will be the focus and difficulty of current and future design.

In general, our PCB design focuses on the following points:

1, Function realization

2, stable performance

3, easy processing

4, the beauty of the board

Functional realization is the first step of PCB. In the past, due to the low signal edge rate and low clock frequency, the quality of the physical connection did not affect the performance of use as long as there were no errors in the logical connection. However, this view is not used in the current design. Here's a good example:

The circuit board designer of a famous image detection system manufacturer in the United States recently encountered a strange thing: a product designed and manufactured successfully 7 years ago and listed has been able to work very stably, but the recently offline product has a problem, and the product cannot operate normally.

Therefore, the true connection of logic cannot make the true realization of social functions. The quality of the physical network connection is also the main working condition that a function can be implemented.

Performance guarantee * PCB design, which we have experience with. The same logical connection, the same device, different PCB their performance test results are different. Good design not only has high product stability, but also has passed a variety of demanding tests. But an imperfect design could not have achieved such an effect. In some low-end products, many manufacturers use the same chipset and similar logical connections. The only difference is the level of its PCB design, the difference in the product is mainly reflected in the PCB design.

Ease of processing is also an important indicator of PCB design. A good PCB design is easy to process, maintain, test and manufacture. The quality of PCB is not only related to the production efficiency of PCB manufacturers and SMT manufacturers, but also closely related to the convenience of our testing and debugging.

Beauty is also an element of PCB design. The overall beauty and atmosphere make people look comfortable and comfortable. PCB is also a process. A good PCB will make people stop and linger.

PCB design is a comprehensive discipline, which is the product of quality, cost and time coordination. PCB design is not the best, only better. In short, the design of high-speed PCB is a serious challenge in the field of system design today, which needs to be actively and seriously addressed from the aspects of design methods, design tools, the composition of the design team, and the design ideas of engineers.

physical carrier communication network