V súčasnej dobe, high-speed PCB design is widely used in communication, computer, graphic image processing, and other fields. Engineers use different strategies for designing high-speed PCBS in these areas.

In the field of telecommunications, the design is very complex, and the transmission speed has been much higher than 500Mbps in the data, voice, and image transmission applications. In the field of communications, people are pursuing the faster launch of higher performance products, and the cost is not the first. They’ll use more layers, enough power layers and layers, and discrete components on any signal line that might have high-speed problems. They have SI (Signal integrity) and EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) experts to perform pre-wiring simulation and analysis, and each design engineer follows strict design regulations within the enterprise. So design engineers in the communications field often adopt this strategy of over-designing high-speed PCB designs.

Motherboard design in the home computer field is at the other extreme, cost and effectiveness above all else, designers are always using the fastest, best, highest performance CPU chips, memory technology, and graphics processing modules to form increasingly complex computers. And home computer motherboards are usually 4-layer boards, some high-speed PCB design technology is difficult to apply to this field, so home computer engineers usually use excessive research methods to design high-speed PCB boards, they should fully study the specific situation of the design to solve those high-speed circuit problems that really exist.

The usual high-speed PCB design may be different. Manufacturers of key components in high-speed PCB (CPU, DSP, FPGA, industry-specific chips, etc.) will provide the design materials about the chips, which are usually given in the form of the reference design and design guide. However, there are two problems: firstly, there is a process for device manufacturers to understand and apply signal integrity, and system design engineers always want to use the latest high-performance chips at the first time, so the design guidelines provided by device manufacturers may not be mature. So some device manufacturers will issue multiple versions of design guidelines at different times. Secondly, the design constraints given by the device manufacturer are usually very stringent, and it may be very difficult for the design engineer to meet all the design rules. However, in the absence of simulation analysis tools and the background of these constraints, satisfying all constraints is the only means of high-speed PCB design, and such a design strategy is usually called excessive constraints.

A backplane design has been described that uses surface-mounted resistors to achieve terminal matching. More than 200 of these matching resistors are used on the circuit board. Imagine if you had to design 10 prototypes and change those 200 resistors to ensure the best end match, it would be a huge amount of work. Surprisingly, not a single change in resistance was due to the analysis of the SI software.

Therefore, it is necessary to add high-speed PCB design simulation and analysis to the original design process, so that it becomes an integral part of the complete product design and development.