3 ms·
> Taking the die off the board and flipping it over reveals the typical beauty of an RF design. Knowing basically nothing about electrical engineering, what do
by pixelpoet 5y ago
> Taking the die off the board and flipping it over reveals the typical beauty of an RF design.
Knowing basically nothing about electrical engineering, what does this refer to?
- moffkalast 5y agoRF would stand for radio frequency I guess, so I suppose it's the wifi module or something.
- geerlingguy 5y agoNot an RF engineer, nor even electrical engineer, but from what little I know, if you think computer networking is voodoo magic (as I do), RF design (especially in tiny couple-mm-square chips) is like black arts mixed with ancient mythology. RF does weird things, and controlling it so it can be useful for high speed networking in the wacky environments where we put computers is IMO a pretty big feat of modern engineering. But the chip design is just pretty in its own right, with the layers coming through.
- pixelpoet 5y agoThanks for the explanation, and love your videos BTW!
- GeorgeTirebiter 5y agoRF usually has not too many transistors, but sometimes a lot of coils and capacitors. You can see the coils in the design, somewhat snake-like. Capacitors can be realized in many ways, conducting material over a dielectric. Bulk capacitors are external (as you can see). Matching LC are external because those depend on the antenna; I'm a little disappointed there wasn't more detail given of the antenna, because this type I believe is a 'first' for the RPi 'in-board' antennas, in that they have two lines of series-connected capacitors inside the 'triangle'. I don't yet know how this works. RF ICs are usually hand-routed, too. So you get to see some real 'Art'.
- pixelpoet 5y agoIt's surprising that humans can beat machines at complex trace routing, especially given modern ML techniques. Thanks for the explanation!