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Hi <<First Name>>


Do you have demanding stackups in your designs? For super high speed? Or because your prototypes are build locally and production runs in the far east?

If you want to become a master of PCB stackups, you should meet Lee Ritchey in Stockholm this summer at the Stackup Design course. I have learned so much from him, and I am sure you will too. If board level electronic design or procurement is part of your future, you really have no choice. Stackup design is an increasingly essential skill. Read on and I will explain more about that.

How about Maxwell's equations? Do You remember how the field equations work? Or are you like most of us...? I have wanted to do this for a long time, but finally I am able to present a short refresher course on Fields and Waves.

Its only 3 hours. And sceduled so you can fit this in after work. Or you can arrive early the day before the Stackup Design course and do this as well. I am looking forward to this (and to the informal beer tasting/networking we do later that day :-) Beers and Maxwell should go well together I think...

Read more about all of this and more below.

And remember - we do increase prices of all courses from the "Early Bird" level to regular price on April 2nd. So save those money (and help us make sure we are organizing the right courses for you) by signing up RIGHT NOW.

Upcoming Open Courses

  • Apr 11-12: Signal Integrity with Hands-On Simulation in Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Apr 18-19: Same in Sao Paulo, Brazil
  • May 30-31: Open the Black Box of Memory, Sweden

Stockholm SI Week

  • Jun 10-12: Lee Ritchey: Signal Integrity
  • Jun 13: SI Simulation Workshop
  • Jun 13: Fields and Wave Refresher
  • Jun 14: Lee Ritchey: Stackup Design
We do company specific on-site courses as well. Call to arrange.

Upcoming Open Courses

  • Mar 19+20: Signal Integrity with Hands-On Simulation in Switzerland
  • Apr 11-12: Same Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • Apr 18-19: Same in Sao Paulo, Brazil
  • May 30-31: Open the Black Box of Memory, Sweden

Stockholm SI Week

  • Jun 10-12: Lee Ritchey: Signal Integrity
  • Jun 13: SI Simulation Workshop
  • Jun 13: Fields and Wave Refresher
  • Jun 14: Lee Ritchey: Stackup Design
We do company specific on-site courses as well. Call to arrange.

Lee Ritchey: Stackup Design

With the increases in signalling speed, the industry has come to a point where designers need to understand way more about printed circuit board materials and fabrication in order to successfully design and specify PCB’s.

The faster signal speeds make copper roughness a real issue of discussion due to skin effect losses. Boards are routinely prototyped locally with mass production off-shore, which really stresses the need to specify and test what is really important. Glass fiber weave differences introduce skew in differential signals and trace impedance variations. Numerous trade-offs needs to be made between electrical performance, manufacturability, yield and cost.

Recent disasters like the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the Thailand flooding alerted the world to dangers of single suppliers anywhere in the supply chain. With more specialized low loss materials being specified in board stackups, companies expose themselves to bigger risks. Understanding the material situation and second sourcing options are paramount to reduce this risk.

Challenges for the Designers

The expectations are on the designers to understand and design and specify board stackups that are both economically and technically well designed to work reliably in products based on modern high speed parts. To further complicate matters, the requirements for complex multilayer boards today are simply outside the skill set of most PCB fabricators today.

This course is designed to enable the participants to fully understand the complex field, to design efficient board stackups and to communicate this in a sensible way to both purchasing and fabricators.

I have convinced Lee Ritchey to do the new one-day stackup design course alone. Last time we had the course in Copenhagen, Rich from Isola was in charge of the first half of the content. He can't make it to Stockholm this time, and I know Lee can do an even better presentation on this super important topic. So I really look forward to that.

BONUS: You save money if you sign up before April 2nd. But you save even more if you also use the promotion code “EET999”.

We really really prefer payment by credit card, but if you can't or aren't allowed to do that, see below for what to do.

Date: Jun 14th. Price: EUR 659

Read more and sign up on the web>>

Fields and Wave Refresher


Something that I have wanted to do for a long time is the short refresher course on Fields and Waves.

If you are like most engineers I meet, you have a hard time remembering exactly how Maxwell's equations work. But we all know understanding electric and magnetic fields is paramount to high speed design. The fields and wave refresher course is designed to fill out exactly that gap.

An investment of only 3 hours of your time can make a dramatic difference in the understanding of these subjects.

"The theory we really need to understand, but don't really remember"

I have arranged with Johan Jacob Mohr, Ph.D., Associate Professor at DTU Electrical Engineering to have this course run for the first time as part of our Stockholm SI Week on Thursday 13/6 from 14:30 to 17:30.

Price is EUR 180.

Read more and sign up on the web>>

Pssst: Those of you who have been following me know that I have long been telling DTU to step up and include signal-integrity as a significant part of the education of the new electronic engineers. This course may very well be the first small step in that direction.

SI Simulation Workshop


Another new thing, that I have wanted to do for a long time is to add a some hands-on simulation to the 3-day Lee Ritchey course on signal-integrity.

The number of participants (typically 50+) prohibits us from doing lab exercises with hands-on as part of the 3-day Lee Ritchey course. But for a more limited group, we can do the related lab exercises as a separate day. This is what we do now. So it's first come first serve.

We rent in PC's and have them all set up with Cadence SigXplorer, so we can spend as much time as possible on simulations hands-on in the four major SI areas. That will help understanding the concepts of the 3-day course and you will be ready to start doing those same simulations on your own.

This course runs on Thursday June 13th from 8:30 to 14.

Price is EUR 511.

Read more and sign up on the web>> (use promo code EET999)

If you have previously taken my 2-day signal integrity course, you should be familiar with these lab exercises as they have evolved from that course as true and tested.

Lee Ritchey: Signal Integrity (3 day)


The flagship course in Signal Integrity is Lee Ritchey's 3-day course, which I still (after 13 years of hearing this stuff many times) think is the best SI course you can get.



Not only because I really like the practical and hands-on way Lee presents the subject, but also because it's constantly updated with the newest real-life design problems straight from the labs in Silicon Valley and other places where Lee consults on tough problems. You can probably guess from the picture that the course is filled with a good sense of humor as well.

Your benefits from taking this course are very real:
  • Fewer board revisions cuts development time
  • Lee’s ”first-time-right” methods reduce project risk
  • You stay sharp and increase your own value to your company
  • Robust designs reduce support cost and time
Thousands of engineers have enjoyed these courses previously. Your next chance is in Stockholm this summer. Who knows when the next chance will be?

The course runs Mon-Wed June 10/11/12 from 9:00 to 16:00

Price is EUR 1924.

Read more and sign up on the web>> (use promo code EET999)

If you only take one course on SI, this should be it.

Open the Black Box of Memory


If you have memory as part of your designs, this new course is something you should consider. Understand how DIMM manufacturers get away with 2 routing layers and how you can do the same on your boards.

Hermann Rückerbauer has spent most of his engineering career on memory, so he really knows way to much about that subject. The good thing is he also knows how to present exactly the things you need to design memory systems from SDRAM to DDR4 more efficiently.

This course runs over two days on May 30-31 from 9 to 16.

Price is EUR 1300.

Read more and sign up on the web>> (use promo code EET999)

From the Blog

Some of the most read news we have posted to the website recently are here, in case you missed them.
  • "Cheap Cool Logic Analyzer" about how hobby level logic analyzers suddenly seem much more useful at a fraction of the cost.
  • "Really funky PCB layouts" showing what can happen when a dedicated person decides to write his own PCB layout tool just so that he can design artistic boards.
  • "Cheap 5GHz SMA Cal-Kit" on how you can get a cal-kit for your network analyzer for less than EUR 100.
Enjoy reading.

If You Can't Pay by Credit Card

As you will see on the web page for signup, we really want you to pay by credit card. It's just so much easier for us. And your money is safe with our booking partner, so we do not see the money before after the course actually runs.

But if you can't or is not allowed to use credit card, we CAN send you a normal invoice instead.

First find out if you need a purchase order number (PO number) on the invoice. Many bigger companies require this or they won't pay the invoice.

You can then just do a normal sign-up, but use "INVOICE" as the promotion code. You will not get the promotion code discount, but hey... it's more work to us (and you do get the early bird price if you sign up before April 2nd). Remember to input your PO number (if required) and the VAT ID for the company. We will issue an invoice and send it per email to you. This is a manual process and we batch them up, so don't sit waiting for it.

Thanks for your understanding - and we look forward to help you. Let us know if you have any special requirements or need further help signing up.

Tag-Connect Squeezes in Your Test Points

This is one of those products you run into and think - why haven't I seen this before? (actually I had seen it before, but rediscovered it at Embedded World last month and thought I wanted to share it with you). Tag-Connect transforms 6-14 absolutely free and very compact test points on your board into a really nice debug interface connector.



Something you can use on all boards and never have to decide if it should be populated or not - because it's just a footprint. No physical part on the board. And as you can see its really compact.

Read the rest of my story on that idea>>


Thanks for reading - remember to learn something today...

Rolf V. Ostergaard
EE-Training: www.ee-training.dk
PDN-Tool: pdntool.com

PS: Please help yourself and your company by making sure you sign up to the courses you want before Easter. And help me by forwarding this email to those colleagues you know are interested - so they can save money too.
Thanks - You just made my day better.
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