IntelCAD Blog
Notes from the team building AI for hardware.
News, tutorials and engineering notes from the IntelCAD.ai team on AI-assisted PCB and electronics design.
PCB Trace Width: How to Size Traces for Current, Heat and Voltage
How to size PCB trace width for current: IPC-2221 formula, IPC-2152 guidance, a quick width table, copper thickness, inner vs outer layers and spacing.
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Thermal Vias and PCB Thermal Management: A Practical Guide to Sizing, Spacing and Via-in-Pad
Learn how thermal vias move heat through a PCB, how many to use, how to size and space them, when to use via-in-pad, and how to avoid solder wicking.
PCB Ground Plane Design: A Practical Guide to Grounding, Return Paths and Stitching Vias
Learn how a PCB ground plane works, why return paths matter, when to split ground, how to place stitching vias and how to avoid ground bounce.
Controlled Impedance PCB Design: A Practical Guide to Rules, Stackup and Testing
Learn when a PCB needs controlled impedance, how trace width and stackup set it, how to use an impedance calculator and how to specify it to your fab.
Decoupling Capacitor Guide: How to Choose Values and Place Them on a PCB
Learn what a decoupling capacitor does, how to pick values and package sizes, and where to place it on a PCB, plus common mistakes and how AI helps.
PCB Stackup Design: 4, 6 and 8 Layer Guide
A good PCB stackup sets impedance, EMI and cost. Learn how to plan 4, 6 and 8 layer stackups, avoid common mistakes and see where AI helps.
Electronic Component Sourcing: A Practical Guide
Electronic component sourcing decides cost, lead time and risk. Learn how to source parts, avoid counterfeits and shortages, and where AI helps engineers.
PCB DFM: A Practical Guide to Design for Manufacturability
PCB DFM catches costly fab and assembly problems before production. Learn the key design for manufacturability rules, a DFM checklist and how AI helps.
RS-485 Surge Protection: Why TVS-Protected Ports Still Fail
An RS-485 board can communicate flawlessly on the bench, survive an ESD check, and still lose its transceiver after installation on a long factory cable. The missing protection is often not another diode: it is coordination between the clamp, the semiconductor being protected, the impedance between protection stages, and the physical route by which surge …
No-Clean Flux Residue, Humidity, and PCB Leakage: Why High-Impedance Sensor Boards Fail in the Field
A precision sensor board can look clean, calibrate correctly, and run for days on a dry engineering bench, then develop offset, slow drift, or intermittent saturation after installation in a humid enclosure. The missing circuit element is often not in the schematic: it is a moisture-dependent leakage path across the assembled PCB. When that path …
MLCC Flex Cracks: Preventing PCB Flex Damage and Hidden Shorts That Escape Production Test
A board can pass electrical testing and still contain the beginning of its next field failure. Depanelization, connector insertion, screw fastening, or enclosure assembly can load a multilayer ceramic capacitor mechanically after the test that supposedly proved the board was good. The engineering challenge is therefore not just to find a shorted capacitor, but to …
650 V GaN Half-Bridge PCB Design: Preventing False Turn-On and Gate Overvoltage
A silicon half-bridge can appear well behaved while hiding layout weaknesses that become destructive after a move to GaN. Faster voltage and current transitions expose shared source inductance, gate-loop resonance, and capacitive coupling that were previously tolerable, and an oscilloscope can either reveal those problems or create a convincing imitation of them. Successful migration therefore …
GNSS Receiver Desense: How to Find and Fix PCB Noise and GPS Interference
A GNSS receiver can communicate perfectly with its host MCU while the surrounding PCB quietly destroys its ability to receive satellites. The schematic may match the reference design, every supply may measure correctly with a multimeter, and the antenna may be connected, yet enabling a converter, processor workload, or radio transmission causes reception to collapse. …
SAR ADC Crosstalk in Multiplexed Front Ends: Fixing First-Sample Errors
Your sensor voltages look correct on a meter, each channel works when sampled alone, and the board fails only when firmware starts scanning. That combination points toward a dynamic acquisition problem: the multiplexer, driver, and ADC sampling network have not forgotten the previous channel before the next conversion begins. The fix is to treat analog …
10BASE-T1S Multidrop Sensor Boards: Reliable Single-Pair Ethernet Design
A two-board Ethernet demonstration proves that a transmitter, receiver, and software stack can exchange packets. It does not prove that a shared harness will remain reliable after adding sensor nodes, service connectors, protection devices, and a nearby motor drive. For 10BASE-T1S, the real design unit is the complete mixing segment: cable, connectors, boards, endpoint terminations, …
Recoverable OTA Firmware Updates: Designing MCU Boards You Can Patch After Shipment
A connected product is not meaningfully patchable just because it can download firmware over the air. A recoverable OTA firmware update must do more: it must authenticate the update, survive interrupted installation, recognize when the new application is unhealthy, and recover without turning a remote security incident into a fleet-wide service visit. The EU Cyber …
Fine-Pitch BGA Escape Routing: Stacked Microvia Reliability on HDI PCBs
Escaping a fine-pitch BGA is a geometric problem; keeping that escape network intact through assembly and service is a materials, fabrication, and qualification problem. On an HDI PCB, a stacked-microvia connection can pass room-temperature electrical testing yet contain an interface that separates during reflow, and may reconnect when the board cools. The objective of BGA …
Why Edge-AI Boards Brown Out: Fixing Voltage Droop on 0.8-1.2 V Core Rails
The board boots, the firmware runs, and the regulator appears comfortably sized, then the processor resets when inference starts. On a 0.8-1.2 V core rail, the missing specification is often not maximum current but how much voltage the complete power-delivery path loses while current changes. The solution is to treat the regulator, capacitors, interconnect, package, …
USB-C Power Delivery 240W EPR: Preventing 48V Hot-Plug Failures in Sink PCB Design
A USB-C sink can negotiate 48 V correctly and still destroy its input MOSFET during startup. At the 240 W ceiling of USB-C Power Delivery Extended Power Range (EPR), introduced with USB PD 3.1 (48 V at 5 A), the protocol establishes permission to draw power, but reliable operation still depends on cable qualification, controlled …
Gerber Files Explained: What PCB Manufacturers Need (Q&A Guide)
Gerber files are the de facto handoff format between PCB design and PCB manufacturing. If you have ever asked “what are Gerber files?”, “which Gerber files does my fab need?” or “Gerber vs ODB++ vs IPC-2581: which should I send?”, this Q&A-style guide answers those questions in plain engineering terms. What are Gerber files? A …
BOM Management Software for Electronics: What to Look For and How AI Helps
BOM management software keeps electronics BOMs accurate, sourced and current. See the features that matter, common pitfalls and how AI improves your BOM.
Obsolete Electronic Components: How to Find, Replace and Prevent Them
Obsolete electronic components can stall production. Learn how to spot end-of-life parts early, find drop-in replacements and design out the risk with AI.