High-speed digital design
by Howard Wesley Johnson · first published 1993
65% recommend30% neutral4% critical
Why HN recommends it
Practical guide to the analog side of fast digital circuits: signal integrity, impedance, reflections, crosstalk and routing. Suits EE students and working engineers; one reader learned more than in undergrad.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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A long article that says almost nothing. Instead of choosing trace widths and layer count and component sizes at random, take a week to read and understand the very useful book "High Speed Digital Design" by Howard Johnson. Despite the name it concerns itself more with the analog domain than with the digital. Very useful information about the behavior of traces and holes in boards.
on “PCB Design Tutorial for Startups” ↗…responses. For example Basic: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forrest-M... Intermediate (with a heavy RF slant): http://www.arrl.org/arrl-handbook-2015 Advanced: https://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp... And then there are the various subcategories: low level precision analog, high power motors and switchgear, basic digital and microcontrollers, high speed processors, etc... you're asking…
on “Ask HN: I want to learn electronics design. Where should I start” ↗Unfortunately I learned EE as an apprentice with no books but I've heard High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic [1] is good. Understanding why high speed is more like RF and analog electronics has a lot to do with impedance, which is the "resistance" of a material to a change in current…
on “$99 Parallella Supercomputer is Now Open Source Hardware” ↗I highly recommend that book as well, I learned more about signal integrity from reading it twice than I did during all of EE undergrad. Link: http://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp/...
on “Flipping bits in memory without accessing them [pdf]” ↗…Signal Integrity within EE - a rabbit hole which I decided to base my career on. For anyone desiring more detail (with some minimal EE knowledge as a prerequisite), two of the most popular texts are: High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic by Johnson/Graham and Signal and Power Integrity - Simplified by Eric Bogatin. https://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp... https://www.amazon.com/Signal-Power-Integrity-Simplified-Pre...
on “Signal Reflection” ↗This, for reference see the book High Speed Digital Design by Hall Hall and McCall https://archive.org/details/highspeeddigital0000hall/ The sharper the edge of the digital pulse, the greater the strength of the AC high frequency components. A perfect square…
on “Eliminating Radio Interference from Apple Charger” ↗High Speed Digital Design is a great book (a "handbook of black magic," as its subtitle professes), and it is a nice complement to Horowitz and Hill's The Art of Electronics. You're exactly right that the former addresses way…
on “PCB Design Tutorial for Startups” ↗…found this article too basic to be actionable. Here is a thorough reference on the subject from Artech: https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Microwave-Grounding-Artech... A related classic is: High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0133957241
on “Properly Ground your Circuits” ↗A hacker or hobbyist like me can almost always get away with rules and habits instead of real engineering. A longer form of this article, full of applicable advice and rules, is Howard Johnson’s “High-Speed Digital Design”.
on “High Speed Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design Guidelines” ↗That's why one of the best books on high speed digital electronics is titled High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp...
on “The Mysterious 50 Ohm Impedance: Where It Came from and Why We Use It” ↗…https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Ap... - Introduction to Verilog or VHDL (languages for hardware) maybe on FPGA's or well-known boards https://www.amazon.com/Programming-FPGAs-Getting-Started-Ver... - High Speed Digital Design (many recommended it) https://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp... - Cookbook with many examples for FPGA's I don't have one. Most with these titles are expensive. One that looked…
on “Putting the “You” in CPU” ↗There's a reason one of the go-to books[1] in this area is subtitled "A Handbook of Black Magic". [1]https://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp...
on “Signal Reflections in Electronic Circuits” ↗…Solder the shield braid to board GND. 50ohm terminate your scope, set probe amplification to 20x, and voila! Excellent tip recommended both by Paul Horowitz (Art of Electronics) and Howard Johnson (High Speed Digital Design). Works like a charm!
on “2 GHz Active Probe” ↗IO is 100% analog. Slew rates, crosstalk, reflections, routing, etc. It is literary called Black Magic in EE community. Must read "High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic": https://books.google.pl/books/about/High_speed_Digital_Desig...
on “AMD Discloses Initial Zen 2 Details” ↗High-speed Digital Design should probably be on the hardware list. It was recommended in all kinds of places plus doing high-performance often takes different style. Id be interested in an ASIC engineer's opinion on it if one…
on “Programming books you might want to consider reading” ↗