Hi All,
I have a question for all the PCB design experts and enthusiasts on the forum. Over the past month I've been looking to step up my skills/knowledge in the realm of power distribution in PCB layouts. One thing that I've seen in some examples I've found online is this routing technique in which a straight trace is drawn for a power rail (often wider than other traces on the board) and a number of traces branching off this one trace at a 90 degree angle distributing power to various parts of the circuit. It king of resembles a comb.
The notion of a 90 degree trace bend on a PCB being some evil thing that should be avoided at all costs has been called into question quite a bit over the recent years. I understand there may be instances where it might be an acceptable solution or even the best solution.
The following questions come to mind:
- When is this power distribution routing technique acceptable to use?
- What are the circumstances under which this technique would be the best option for routing power?
- When this technique is used, what are the best practices for its implementation?
Any insight would be helpful as I've struggled to find articles online explaining this.
Thanks,
Chance
Not fully defined question and bunch of loosely related and unrelated answers ...
Please, explain what PDN network is for (the actual application?).
For a retro computer with few TTL chips in PDIP it is going to be vastly different answer than for a very fast CPU or FPGA with 100W of power and 100ps edges...
And everything in between....
What you are describing would be something like TTL power net in the olden days..
Today with very fast logic and highly integrated chips, you need to start with proper PCB stack (many PCB layers, dedicated to power or data or combined and their layout) and then go from there.