Martin, When outsourcing the design to a design house, be sure to find out what tool they are using. A big thing that makes the process work better is to take advantage of email during the design process. Many PWB vendors have free viewers that work pretty well for reviewing a layout in progress - even the same database can be reviewed concurrently over the phone. The layout can be emailed and reviewed on a regular basis to prevent cost/schedule delays. On average, outsourcing works well, but I still prefer to use our in-house layout design group. Design control is much more effective when you can draw a picture on a whiteboard to explain what you want for specific layout requirements. You also can keep them focused on your design and not timeshare with another client's project. It's difficult to do that over the phone. Either way, you will still need to spend time with the layout designer to get the layout correct. Effective Layout Designers have develop a specialized discipline of viewing the design in a graphic sense like the "flow" and "partitioning" of mixed signal boards. The trick for the Signal Integrity Engineer is to translate the schematic and knowledge of the mixed signal design requirements into a graphical sense that the Layout Designer understands. Working together with the Design Engineer, the end result is a PWB that is what the Design Engineer originally envisioned on time and within budget. If you "throw it over the wall", it's okay, you will probably get another opportunity to re-lay it out correctly after you spend hours, days, weeks debugging Signal Integrity induced problems. You could have been debugging code, testing and shipping the product (you know revenue producing things). But then, there are alot of opportunities out there to find new employment when you are actually made responsible for your decision. I hear Burger King is accepting applications. Philip Ross Wellington Mgr. Signal Integrity & EMI L-3 Communications CSW -----Original Message----- From: Martin Euredjian [mailto:martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 3:57 PM To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [SI-LIST] Layout service recommendations Being almost ready to go to layout I've been thinking about the issues of sending a design out to a service bureau instead of doing it in-house. Unless you work for a large corporation (I don't) you might not have access to the $100K+ EDA tools and support infrastructure (budget, bodies, equipment, etc.) you might need to produce good designs that work "out of the box". My particular design is a small 5x7 in board that has a 1.5Gb/s front end which gets deserialized and fed into FPGA's etc. Most internal frequencies are in the 100 to 200 MHz range, with wide busses. Is it reasonable to assume that a good layout service can get this right the first time? What should one look for? Are there any rules-of-thumb in terms of cost? What guarantees should one demand? What should be the hand-off process? What's the best way to assure success? Much like the list of recommended PCB houses, it might be nice to assemble a list of high-speed-capable layout service houses. I'll volunteer to compile and post to this list. Thank you, =============================== Martin Euredjian eCinema Systems, Inc. voice: 661-305-9320 fax: 661-775-4876 martin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.ecinemasys.com =============================== ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: http://www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List archives are viewable at: http://www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: http://www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List archives are viewable at: http://www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu