April 1, 2008 -- Printed circuit board (PCB) design often begins with the development of signal integrity (SI) guidelines to ensure adequate performance of the final product. Most often the guidelines are based on traditional engineering practices through manual manipulation of circuit parameters and judicious interpretation of results. While such approaches do result in useful conclusions, they can also consume significant effort, only to reach sub-optimal conclusions. Alternatively, optimization routines can be used to aid in SI analysis and the development of PCB design guidelines.

Optimization routines have been well proven to aid analysis across a variety of common tasks, such as determining the optimal values for circuit parameters. In addition, there are several non-traditional applications where optimization can be useful, such as developing application-specific termination schemes.

By Pat Zabinski, Ben Buhrow, Barry Gilbert, and Erik Daniel. (Zabinski is a principal engineer, Buhrow is a senior engineer, Gilbert is director of the special-purpose processor development group, and Daniel is deputy director of the special-purpose processor development group, all at the Mayo Clinic.)