Steven Newberry is a signal integrity and power integrity engineer at Chipletz whose career began in the US Coast Guard as an electrician, where hands-on troubleshooting sparked his interest in design and ultimately led him into engineering.

Signal integrity ensures high-speed, multi-gigabit signals move across chips and boards without corruption, while power integrity maintains stable voltages that directly affect those signals; together they are essential in any electronic system.

SI/PI is critical in virtually all electronics—from CPUs talking to memory in mobile devices to Ethernet networks in homes and offices—wherever chips must communicate reliably.

Simulation goes hand in hand with measurement, enabling engineers to predict and prevent issues before fabrication; more upfront simulation reduces debugging and troubleshooting later.

Comprehensive simulation of entire boards or packages remains infeasible due to complexity, and setup is slowed by imperfect data exchange formats like ODB++. Simulations can also take days or weeks on complex, high-frequency designs.

Computational speed is the major constraint. Because simulation is iterative, faster turnaround directly shortens design cycles and enables better optimization.

SI/PI is relatively young, with the term only appearing in the late 1980s. Tools continue to advance, incorporating AI optimization, while interface standards like PCIe keep doubling data rates, creating constant new challenges for simulation and manufacturing.

Artificial intelligence is expected to play a transformative role, with startups and incumbents alike working on AI-augmented solvers. Faster, more accurate simulations could lower manufacturing costs, improve device performance, or reduce time-to-market.