Name: Rick Hartley Seminar 2025
Start: 2025-05-13T09:00
End: 2025-05-14T17:00
Location: Coppid Beech Hotel John Nike Way Bracknell

Seminar Description

The 2 day seminar will take place on 28th – 29th of October 2025 at the Cambridge Belfry Hotel, Cambridge, United Kingdom. The instructor will be Zachariah Peterson, a well-known PCB design expert, and electronics design consultant. Aside from being a familiar face on Altium’s instructional videos, Zachariah’s consultancy assists electronics manufacturers and OEMs, providing strategy, and highly technical content.

Introduction to new participants

These sessions have been developed by Zachariah Peterson based on years of experience building and deploying real systems, original research and publications, and based on input from other experts in the field. The courses will present the core concepts required for success in PCB design as interface speeds continue to increase and formerly specialized SI problems become more common. The course concepts span from real layout practices to analysis concepts and topics in EMI/EMC and manufacturing.

Introduction to past participants

The sessions have been updated from our previous 2-day seminar in 2024 to include topics in packaging/IC substrates, flex PCBs with hatched planes, package/die models, and RF designs integrated with digital on HDI PCBs.

High-speed design introduction

Introduction to the courses: high-speed PCB design
When does a circuit board become “advanced”
Influence of stackup on high-speed PCBs
PCB layout issues that affect SI
PCB layout issues that also affect EMI

Differential pair/high-speed interface design

Basics of differential pairs
Termination and coupling
Impedance calculations
Length matching limits (Serial interface vs. groups of pairs)
Differential crosstalk
Mode conversion
Differential vias vs. single-ended vias
Routing and return paths – splits in planes, routing over cut up power planes, etc.
Differential pairs and SI on flex PCBs

Fundamental transmission line theory