November 2017 • The PCB Design Magazine 73
5
Insulectro Teams with Isola to
Address Signal Integrity Needs
Insulectro and Isola recently
shared a combined booth dur-
ing PCB West 2017. Insulectro
has distributed Isola materials
for years, and the companies
wanted to focus on Isola's line-
up of high-speed, low-loss ma-
terial sets. Insulectro's Chris Hunrath, VP of Tech-
nology, and Norm Berry, Director of Laminates
and OEM Marketing, sat down with me to discuss
the challenges facing signal integrity engineers to-
day, and some of the Isola low-loss, low-Dk materi-
als that can help with signal integrity.
6
Sunstone Integrates SnapEDA
Libraries into PCB123
Sunstone Circuits and
SnapEDA recently announced
that SnapEDA's parts library
would be integrated into
Sunstone's PCB123 design
tool. During PCB West, I in-
terviewed EDA Product Man-
ager Nolan Johnson of Sun-
stone Circuits and SnapEDA President Natasha
Baker. We discussed their new partnership, the
changing parts library landscape, and where the
companies see this alliance heading in the future.
7
Beyond Design:
Plane Cavity Resonance
When return current flows through the impedance
of a cavity, between two planes, it generates volt-
age. Although quite small (typically in the order
of 5mV) the accumulated noise from simultaneous
switching devices can become significant. And un-
fortunately, as core voltages drop, noise margins
become tighter. In this column, I will cover plane
cavity resonance and look at how it impacts elec-
tromagnetic radiation.
8
Carl Schattke: I Started Designing
Boards When I Was 12
Growing up with a father
who owned a PCB design
bureau, Carl Schattke,
CID+, may have been
predestined to design cir-
cuit boards for a living. In
fact, he's been designing
boards for nearly his entire life. Carl gave a key-
note speech at the recent AltiumLive event in San
Diego, where I caught up with him to discuss a
lifetime spent in PCB design.
9
Polar Speedstack Si Integrates
Insertion Loss Field Solver;
To Exhibit at productronica
Polar Instruments,
a specialist pro-
vider of tools for
PCB design, fab-
rication and test,
announces a ma-
jor enhancement
for Speedstack Si
at productronica. Speedstack Si 2018 edition now
contains an integrated insertion loss field solver,
which lets the user both design and add compre-
hensive insertion loss graphs and stackup specifica-
tion into Speedstack's professional report engine.
J
SiSoft Preparing for DDR5
Simulation Next Year
DDR5 is expected to double the
memory bandwidth and den-
sity of DDR4. I recently spoke
with SiSoft CTO Walter Katz
about his company's efforts
to hit the market with this
game-changing technol-
ogy in 2018.
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