Training Courses

Speeding Edge offers several training courses intended to introduce new engineers to the issues related to successfully designing high speed electronic systems. These courses also serve to update the skills of practicing engineers who are confronted with the rapidly changing world of high speed electronics involved in products ranging from disc drives to terabit routers and supercomputers.

All of these courses are available as private on site courses. Occasionally, these courses are offered as public courses. The public offerings are posted on the Speeding Edge web site and announced through various media. The full description of each course follows below this list.

ONE DAY COURSES

Speeding Edge offers two one day courses intended to upgrade skills in specific areas. These are:

Power Delivery System Design

PCB Stackup Design- Optimizing Signal Integrity, Manufacturability and Reliability of a Printed Circuit Board

TWO DAY COURSES

Signal Integrity and High Speed System Design

THREE DAY COURSES

Signal Integrity and High Speed System Design- extended version

 

One-Day Power Delivery System Design Class:

Speeding Edge is now offering a one-day power delivery system (PDS) design class as an on-site class. Today´s high-speed designs use a variety of power delivery components and successfully designing a PDS and the PCB into which is incorporated requires a thorough understanding of the overall power delivery system. In addition to reviewing the PDS components currently available; this course examines how to meet the conflicting goals of the PDS system and how to address power plane, impedance and overall system capacitance issues.
For more information, follow this link.

PCB Stack Up Design to Optimize Material Selection and Fabrication Techniques for Manufacturability, Reliability and Signal Integrity

Successful fabrication of any PCB starts with selecting the right laminate materials and creating a stackup design that works. Today’s high-speed PCBs with their inherent signal integrity and power delivery requirements make it necessary to employ far more discipline in the choice of materials and the arrangement of layers in the stackup. For more information, follow this link.

Two-Day Signal Integrity and High Speed System Design Course

This comprehensive two-day course from High Speed Design´s "Ratchet Man" covers all key aspects of the high speed design process. If you can take only one course on this subject, this is the one for you.
For more information, follow this link.

Speeding Edge has provided training and consulting to many of the world´s leading electronic product development companies.

Among those companies that have sent engineering professionals to the public courses or have scheduled private, on-site courses are:

*Denotes on-site courses

Here is a sampling of some of the comments from students who attended these courses: "The principals taught and 'tools' learned in the High Speed Design course have proved very beneficial, enabling me to use a more thorough engineering approach to PCB layout." Larry Hewitt, PCB Design Engineer, JTS Corporation "Lee Ritchey's course was the turning point in my understanding capacitance and EMI. I highly recommend this course to engineers and CAD designers who want to pass EMI tests with ample margins." Jelena Larsen, CAD Specialist, 3COM Note: Additional references can be obtained by contacting Speeding Edge

PCB Stack Up Design to Optimize Material Selection and Fabrication Techniques for Manufacturability, Reliability and Signal Integrity

Successful fabrication of any PCB starts with selecting the right laminate materials and creating a stackup design that works. Today’s high-speed PCBs with their inherent signal integrity and power delivery requirements make it necessary to employ far more discipline in the choice of materials and the arrangement of layers in the stackup. These requirements are outside the skill set of all PCB fabricators. The objective of this course is to guide the design engineer through the process of evaluating and selecting the right laminate for any given design and then designing a PCB stackup that meets the numerous demands of a complex, multilayer board that works right the first time. The first portion of this class consists of a one-hour session conducted by Isola Group.Topics that will be addressed include the building blocks available for core and prepeg materials; the impact of material selection; an overview of available materials; what designers should be looking for during the evaluation and selection process and a short tutorial on Isostack, a new web-based stackup tool. and how they are used in various design implementations and what designers should be looking for during the evaluation and selection process. The second portion of the class, which delves more into the role of laminates in high-speed PCBs as well as how to create a successful stackup design, is conducted by Lee Ritchey. Founder and president of Speeding Edge, he is considered to be one of the industry’s premier authorities on the design and manufacture of high-speed PCB systems. The fast data paths that are pervasive in all PCB products being currently designed make it imperative to be able to design stackups that have predictable and repeatable impedances.

The demands addressed in this portion of the course include:

Providing enough signal layers to allow successful routing of all signals to signal integrity rules. Copper thickness in planes and signal layers that meets the conductivity demands of signals and power, and at the same time, be reasonable to manufacture. Accounting for copper roughness and its affect on overall signal path loss. Specifying glass weave styles to minimize differential signal skew. Dealing with the combined loss from both the dielectric and the copper loss to arrive at an effective loss tangent that accurately predicts overall path losses. Specifying copper surface roughness to ensure repeatable loss from lot to lot and fabricator to fabricator. Show how to document a stackup to ensure all design goals are met with finished PCBs.

Providing enough power and ground layers to meet the needs of the power delivery system. Determining dimension trade widths and dielectric thicknesses that allow impedance targets to be met. Ensuring that the spacing between signal layers and their adjacent planes is thin enough to satisfy cross talk needs. Specifying dielectric materials that are economical to manufacture and are readily available. Avoiding the use of expensive techniques such as blind and buried vias and build up processing if possible. Providing for prototyping manufacture in one factory or country and production manufacture in another factory or country.

The following topic areas will be covered in this portion of the course:

How a typical multilayer PCB is built. Alternative PCB Fabrication Methods. Choosing a fabricator as a design partner. Types of signal layers. Alternate ways to stack layers. Selecting an impedance. Making all signal layers the same impedance. Selecting laminates. Considerations when selecting a laminate system. Obtaining laminate information. How thin should laminate and prepeg be to ensure successful manufacture.

Laminate glass weave styles and their effect on differential skew. Selecting the proper copper foil thickness and surface finish. Calculating impedance. Measuring impedance. Impedance test structures. Steps in designing a stackup. Stackup test structurs. Accounting for resin in prepeg flowing into adjacent signal and plane layers. A full stackup drawing. Tools for creating PCB stackups. What about four layer PCBs.

Who should take this course:

This course is designed for all the participants in the design and fabrication process. Among those who will find it valuable are:

Design engineers System architects EMC specialists Signal integrity engineers Technicians PCB layout professionals Applications engineers

IC designers IC package designers Test engineers Project engineers Design managers Engineering managers

Prerequisites:

Any engineering professional who works with high speed design will understand the materials presented. No advanced mathematics are required.
Course Materials

The course fee includes a copy of the course slides. A signed course certificate will be prepared for each student.

ABOUT LEE RITCHEY

LEE RITCHEY
Lee Ritchey is considered to be one of the industry´s premier authorities on high speed PCB and system design and fabrication. He has participated in the design of more than 4,000 high speed PCBs ranging from PC mother boards and elevator controllers to the backplanes used in terabit routers. He is currently involved in the design of several super computer class products as well as video games and servers of all kinds. The course draws substantially from this real-time experience with state of the art components, fabricators and materials. It also draws heavily on the design of backplanes and daughter boards containing thousands of 2.4, 4.8 and 9.6 GB/S signal paths.

In 2004, Ritchey was a regular columnist for EE Times and he has written many articles on high speed design for trade publications such as EDN, Circuitree and PC Design. He is the author of the books, "Right the First Time, A Practical Handbook on PCB and System Design, Volume 1 and Volume 2,” published by Speeding Edge.

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