PCB Modeling Requirements for Personal Computer Systems By Howard Heck

PCB Modeling Requirements for Personal Computer Systems

By

Howard Heck

21st October 2010 (Thursday)

2.00pm - 5.00pm

USAINS Auditorium 1, Kompleks Eureka, USM Main Campus, Penang

Abstract:

Moore's Law has been the fundamental driving force behind the PC industry and the microprocessor for nearly thirty years, providing a doubling in system performance approximately every two years. In addition to the more visible measures (e.g. transistors per chip), staying on the Moore's Law trend drives exponential growth in inter-chip signaling bandwidths. Meeting this demand places pressure on interconnect modeling to provide repeated accuracy improvements while handling increased frequencies. This presentation will examine the requirements for printed circuit board (PCB) interconnect models, taking a historical view to demonstrate the growth in modeling requirements through time, and to project future requirements while suggesting areas for high speed modeling research, covering specific modeling issues for printed circuit boards and connectors, such as:

• Copper surface roughness and effects on skin effect loss

• FR4 dielectric weave construction and effects on mode conversion in differential signals

• 3D modeling of plated through holes and edge card connectors

• Dielectric losses at 40+ GHz

Biography:

Howard Heck has 25 years experience working in the electronic packaging and signal integrity. Since joining Intel in 1995, he has focused on R&D of high speed inter-chip signaling solutions in technical and management roles for a number of products, including the Pentium® II/III/IV Frontside Bus, Direct RDRAM™, DDR II and Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) interfaces. He currently leads development of the specifications and interconnect solutions for SuperSpeed USB 3.0 technology. From 1997 through 2009, he was an Adjunct Professor at the Oregon Graduate Institute, teaching High Speed Signal Integrity and Interconnect Design. He is an IEEE Senior Member, is co-author of Advanced Signal Integrity for High-Speed Digital Designs, a graduate level SI textbook published in 2009.