Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/703122
10 The PCB Design Magazine • July 2016 Andy Shaughnessy is managing editor of The PCB Design Magazine. He has been covering PCB design for 16 years. He can be reached by clicking here. schematics, basic layout, placement, routing, materials, signal integrity, EMC, RF, hybrids, DFX, documentation, etc. Keep your Design Tips entries short and sweet—no more than 100 words. Tool-specific tips are welcome, but keep them positive. We can't publish any tips anonymously; each tip will be published with your name, title and the name of your company. If you absolutely can- not use your company name, we'll need to have your city, state, or country if you're located out- side the U.S. We'll publish a new tip every few days, and readers will be able to see all of the previous tips as well. We see this as much more than a data- base; this will be a continuously updated knowl- edge base of useful tips that other designers can use immediately. After all, most designers know how to design a PCB. It's the little tricks that can help you save a few minutes here, and a few dollars there. Now is your chance to share your knowl- edge with your colleagues, or just show off your great ideas. To submit your contribution to Design Tips, click here. The Signal Integrity Issue This month, we focus on a topic that most of you have to contend with every day, or you will eventually: signal integrity. We have a variety of articles for your perusal, starting with our cover story "New SI Techniques for Large System Per- formance Tuning," a paper that was presented at DesignCon 2016. Authors Michael Steinberg- er and Barry Katz of SiSoft, and Donald Telian of SI Guys present some brand-new techniques for equalization tuning and discontinuity re- duction in large systems—techniques that can improve your design margin. Dennis Nagle of Cadence Design Systems explains how a mod- ern constraint-driven approach can enables all teams to get involved with signal and power in- tegrity earlier in the process. Narayanan TV of Zuken discusses some common design mistakes that can affect signal integrity, and some new solutions that can address these issues. Next, columnist Abby Monaco of Intercept Technology takes us on her journey to more ful- ly understand the ins and outs of impedance. We also have a great interview with John Bush- ie of American Standard Circuits, who explains how PCB designers can avoid over-materializing their designs by utilizing solid design for profit- ability (DFP) methods. We have some great content lined up for you over the next few months. And before you know it, it will be show time again. In the mean- time, it's 90° here in Atlanta, which means it's time for some sweet tea. See you next month. PCBDESIGN WE WANT YOUR PCB DESIGN TIPS! Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have improved the performance of tiny lasers by adding impurities, in a discovery which will be central to the development of low-cost biomedical sensors, quantum computing, and a faster Internet. Researcher Tim Burgess added atoms of zinc to lasers one hundredth the diameter of a human hair and made of gallium arsenide, a material used ex- tensively in smartphones and other electronic de- vices. The impurities led to a 100 times improve- ment in the amount of light from the lasers. Gallium arsenide is a common material used in smartphones, photovoltaic cells, lasers and light- emitting diodes (LEDs), but is challenging to work with at the nanoscale as the material requires a surface coating before it will produce light. Previous ANU studies have shown how to fabri- cate suitable coatings. The new result complements these successes by increasing the amount of light generated in- side the nanostructure, said research group leader Professor Chennupati Jagadish, from the ANU Re- search School of Physics Sciences. A Little Impurity Makes Nanolasers Shine