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Will Vu , 07-10-2025, 05:36 PM

Hello Robert,

My name is William and I'm an entry level electronic designer currently working for a small company in BC, Canada. I'm wondering if you would know where I can find a full walkthrough tutorial to follow along from start to finish to design a 6 to 8 layer high speed FGPA/SoC board, just like your ESP32 course on Youtube.

The reason I'm asking is because I would like to become familiar with both Altium software plus gaining the experience from the industry regarding the high speed design perspective. I bought Phil's course from your website hoping that it would let me follow along to design the board from the ground up, learning how to route differential pairs and perform serpentine routing for length matching as well as many other critical things that I need to be aware of. However, that was not the case once I started the course.

I understand something like that is difficult to come by as it would take a lot of time and effort to put it together but I'm wondering if such an option is available.

Thank you for your time,
William

Sniper2 , 07-10-2025, 06:30 PM

FPGA is high end design work to begin with

Sniper2 , 07-10-2025, 06:32 PM

also by its nature it is VERY case dependent

Sniper2 , 07-10-2025, 06:33 PM

in a way it is like learning how to cook only useing a textbook. to really learn u need to make some real stuff

Sniper2 , 07-10-2025, 06:34 PM

@Will Vu

Sniper2 , 07-10-2025, 06:34 PM

i am not sure what you expect, a grimoare for PCB design?

Will Vu , 07-10-2025, 08:27 PM

Thanks for your reply. Guess I will have to try it out on my own. I get it that I need to try to do things on my own but I am not familiar with several things: The tool (Alitum itself, which I am still trying to get used to), how to create differential pairs and then how to click somewhere on this Altium tool to create the serpentine traces, how to use this tool (Altium again) to ... oh wait a minute, I guess I just need to combine different tutorials to get to where I want to be. It will take time but I guess I just have to do it that way. What I really hope for is one single tutorial that shows me how to lay out this high speed PCB board using the FBGA/SoC BGA type chip with the fancy fanout routing, which itself is a very complicated thing to learn just by watching someone's Youtube video for about 30mins hoping I will be able to pull off the same outcome... Sorry I'm just trying to make it convenient for myself as I am too lazy to learn it slowly by trial and error.

Robert Feranec , 07-11-2025, 05:13 AM

I created advanced PCB Layout course to cover the important peripherals: https://fedevel.com/courses/advanced-pcb-layout-course

Robert Feranec , 07-11-2025, 05:13 AM

I have not created step by step tutorial as it takes hundreds of hours to design these more complex boards and this kind of course would be boring and long.

Sniper2 , 07-11-2025, 06:07 PM

THIS

Sniper2 , 07-11-2025, 06:07 PM

the more high end some stuff gets the longer it takes

Sniper2 , 07-11-2025, 06:08 PM

like if u have 4 DDR chips and u have to length math all signals it gets boring after a few traces , then o wait 80% in u realise it cant be done so u are back to the start

Sniper2 , 07-11-2025, 06:08 PM

ignore my PTSD...

Will Vu , 07-11-2025, 06:57 PM

@Robert Feranec Thank you. I've been following your footstep for a while now and learned so much from your teaching. Yesterday, I just remembered the open source board iMX6 you posted a while back and starting looking into it. Then I realized you have introduced this exact course that I need. I just need to convince my company to pay for it 😁 . Thank you for being an awesome teacher Robert.

Will Vu , 07-11-2025, 07:05 PM

@Sniper2 lol thanks for your PTSD and I do need to hear that lol. Nope I completely understand your point of view. Problem is that when you have limited exposure and you are given so much to learn while lacking that basics... for me it feels so overwhelmed and discouraging to try to start doing it on my own... I do make myself a firm promise to really work my way through this PCB design and layout challenge little by little to get there slowly. And that will take like... 5 years perhaps to be decent at it... not great but decent... At work currently when I am being asked to review someone else's PCB layout, I have absolutely no idea where to start and what to look for in order to give meaningful comments... It really sucks and I don't like it... Other more senior engineers suggested that I read this IEC 62368 document to learn about creepage distance and spacing and I gotta tell ya... it is so boring... important but boring... But I have to keep trying and that's how it goes.

Sniper2 , 07-11-2025, 07:42 PM

that doc is like a table so u can get it on a page

QDrives , 07-12-2025, 04:05 PM

I see that 62368 also has a reference to IEC 60664. I know that 60664 is a standard on creepage and clearance, so I wonder how much of it is actually in 62368.

Will Vu , 07-14-2025, 03:44 PM

@QDrives I'm very new to this stuff so I cannot answer this question. Awhile back I found this Youtube video with clear explanation on this very topic. Not sure if it would be helpful for you but here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vhb60wnW3U&t=400s

QDrives , 07-14-2025, 07:39 PM

Found a copy and IEC 62368 does have the clearance and creepage details in it.