PCBs, copper pours, ground planes, and you
lcamtuf.substack.com · 1,288 words · saved by 1 readers
A closer look at a fashion trend in printed circuit board design.
In the early 1980s, a typical printed circuit board inside an 8-bit home computer looked roughly like this: A detail of the Amstrad CPC 464 main board. By the early 2010s, the same tech would be packaged the following way: A close-up of Arduino Uno R3, from a product promo shot. Other than increased miniaturization, the most striking change is the use of copper pours — that is, computer-generated zones that occupy the empty space between individual traces on a PCB. Why did we start doing this? One hand-wavy answer is that in high-speed electronics, the practice can improve signal…
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