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32 The PCB Design Magazine • May 2015 In the GB/s regime, accurate modeling of conductor losses is a precursor to successful high-speed serial link designs. Failure to model roughness effects can ruin you day. For exam- ple, Figure 1 shows the simulated total loss of a 40-inch PCB trace without roughness compared to measured data. Total loss is the sum of dielec- tric and conductor losses. As can be seen, with just -3dB delta in insertion loss between simu- lated and measured data at 12.5 GHz, there is half the eye height opening with rough copper at 25GB/s. According to Wikipedia, close-packing of equal spheres is defined as "a dense arrange- ment of congruent spheres in an infinite, regu- lar arrangement (or lattice)" [8] . The cubic close- packed and hexagonal close-packed are ex- amples of two regular lattices. The cannonball by Bert Simonovich laMsIM enTerPrIses Cannonball Stack for Conductor Roughness Modeling stack is an example of a cubic close-packing of equal spheres, and is the basis of modeling the surface roughness of a conductor in this article. So what do cannonballs have to do with modeling copper roughness anyway? Well, oth- er than sharing the principle of close packing of equal spheres, and having a cool name, not very much. Background In PCB construction, there is no such thing as a perfectly smooth conductor surface. There is always some degree of roughness that pro- motes adhesion to the dielectric material. Un- fortunately this roughness also contributes to additional conductor loss. Electro-deposited (ED) copper is widely used in the PCB industry. The manufacturing process sees a large rotating drum, made of polished stainless steel or titanium, which is partially submerged in a bath of copper sulfate solution. The cathode terminal is attached to the drum, article