Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1483624
16 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I NOVEMBER 2022 Bogatin: Here at CU last year, we put together a master's program specifically in high-speed digital engineering that covers signal integrity, power integrity, and EMC. We'll take a student graduating with an undergraduate degree, put them through this two-year master's program, and arm them with the expertise to be a con- tributing engineer on a design team. For exam- ple, one course is based on one of my textbooks about high-speed digital engineering, and then they take electromagnetics for SI. ey get that background of Maxwell's equations. I'm also working on a course for high-speed measure- ments, with high-speed scopes and probes, S parameters, TDR, and the best measurement practices in the high-speed world. Shaughnessy: ese graduates sound like more than a PCB design or layout person. Bogatin: Yes. We want to generate hardware engineers, someone who could contribute to the team as a lead signal integrity expert in a hardware group, rather than a layout engineer. You don't need a master's degree to be a lay- out engineer. e more electromagnetics you understand, the more effective you will be because you're responsible for the physical design of the system, but being able to com- municate with and talk with a good lead signal integrity or hardware engineer is more impor- tant than being the expert yourself. ere's so much a hardware engineer needs to know these days, especially just getting your master's degree; it's hard for one person to be the expert in everything. Shaughnessy: What would you recommend studying? Bogatin: I have three books that are really a good foundation. ere's Signal and Power Integrity: Simplified, which is a great foundation book. I have a new one with Artech, Bogatin's Practical Guide to Transmission Line Design and Charac- terization for Signal Integrity Applications. at provides fundamentals of how to think about transmission lines. Last year, I wrote Bogatin's Practical Guide to Prototype Breadboard and PCB Design for my class on printed circuit board design. It pro- vides a strategy for doing rapid prototyping. ese three provide a good foundation and I strongly recommend them. To get more advanced, I recommend Advanced Signal Integrity for High-Speed Digital Design by Ste- phen H. Hall and Heck, who were both at Intel. If you whiz through my books, you've got the math, and if you want to see the real details, their book is a great follow-on. Shaughnessy: ere don't seem to be many PCB design books with a focus on physics. Bogatin: e problem is that if you look at most books that include electromagnetics, 99% of them start with vector calculus, Maxwell's equations, differential and integral formulas, and solving Maxwell's equations. at's how we teach it here at CU because we're teaching it for generalists. Shaughnessy: So, an EE grad and a physics grad can both be good PCB design engineers; they just come at this from different backgrounds. Bogatin: I hope so. If I was a hiring manager looking for a junior engineer right out of We'll take a student graduating with an under- graduate degree, put them through this two-year master's program, and arm them with the expertise to be a contributing engineer on a design team.