Re: PCB Design Houses

Matthew,

I have a guy that I use on these types of jobs, but he is in California. We have done many multi-processor designs to fit in small space that he has layed out. He has also done work all the way up to 5 GHz (although he's not really an RF guy). The only complaint I have is that he always under-estimates the layout time (he will tell you 4 weeks for the board you described. I'll tell you he'll take double that). In the end, the board will be beautiful looking, he will have hand-routed all of the nets you marked as critical, and he will probably catch a few errors you made. Along the way he will probably frustrate you - I long ago just started to double all of his estimates (so that I don't lose sleep). In 10 years he has never failed to deliver a quality product. As for travelling ... if you insist, he'll probably go on a "kick-off" or "review" basis, but he won't do on-site work. Just tell him I told you to call ... his company is CADWORKS (949-461-9211). I couldn't recommed anyone more.

Trevor

My research group is building a mezzanine card that contains a lot of > critical nets. We have four 500MHz DSPs and a V2P FPGA all connected > together in a network. Each DSP also has access to SDRAM. Can anyone > suggest a PCB design house that would route the board for us, someone used > to dealing with signal integrity of many high-speed digital signals in > smaller form factors? If at all possible, we would prefer someone in > Illinois or a consultant that could come to Illinois. > > > ---Matthew Hicks >