Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1441485
JANUARY 2022 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 15 constraints, or is this more of the same but just with higher voltage? Warrier: It depends on who's designing it. It's more of the same. ere are new techniques that need to be learned, especially high speed and high voltage have literally never gone together, or at least I feel like there are some exceptions to the rule, of course. at space program has high speed and high voltage when it comes to that, but outside of some of the rockets or hypersonic missiles we're talking about these days, there are not many applica- tions of very high speed and very high voltage coming along. But now, it's in everybody's hands, so there is a new set of rules from a design rule checks perspective that you need to talk about, which happens to be the case on the electrical design side. However, we were doing that before on a smaller scale in various other industries. We are now putting that in the consumer space, which has more requirements, restrictions, and national highway authority. ey have a mandate that must do a certain thing. You cannot willy-nilly use high speed and high voltage or a car crashes and bursts into flames, which happens quite oen these days. e board designer needs to look at more compliance as does the electrical designer. Matties: Are you saying that high speed and high voltage were separated, but with market conditions and trends, we're going to see more applications where high speed and high volt- age will be utilized as a package? Warrier: I think that's becoming the norm, not the exception. Matties: It sounds like designers will need to understand this compliance and how high speed and high voltage play together, correct? Warrier: Yes, and I think that PCB guys like Andy [Buja] definitely can speak to it. Buja: One of the biggest considerations is whether we have enough room on the board, which all boils down to spacing rules. What types of spacing rules are required to meet certification conditions in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia? We need an understanding of what those rule sets are; they'll have to be bro- ken down into some form of matrix, depend- ing on the current requirements. We need EDA tools to make it easier for the designer to just import the voltage, then utilize the voltage to help calculate the spacings through some formulas. at would really streamline it. It's just a matter of making sure that people aren't going "old school" and trying to come up with spacing rules on their own. Nolan Johnson: How much involvement do you anticipate from the fabricators in developing these rule decks? Buja: We'd like to start collecting a series of rule decks. ere must be some magic table out there, one that's going to support the auto- motive, aerospace, utilities, or basic consumer electronics, and have those in a format that can be imported into the tool. Once we can get that information, it becomes as easy as just an XML file of some sort that would give us a baseline to import that data if the end-user or the schematic author is putting the voltage requirements on the lines in the schematic. en the designer should be able to say, "Run my matrix collection," and have it read all the One of the biggest considerations is whether we have enough room on the board, which all boils down to spacing rules.