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What your Differential Pairs Wish You Knew with Rick Hartley - AltiumLive Keynote

Altium · talk · Watch on YouTube

Electronics & circuit design

What it is

Rick Hartley's AltiumLive keynote on differential pairs in PC boards. He argues the rules from cables and twisted pairs do not carry over, and covers which pair geometry gives the best impedance control, the right spacing, routing practice and how much skew is acceptable.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN engineers cite Hartley as the intuitive, field-based alternative to cargo-cult PCB advice, especially on differential pair routing, reference planes and EMI.

  • 5 people recommended it
  • 6 different months
  • 4 strong recommendations
  • first 2021, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “this is absolutely worth your time if you design PCBs.”

    Intuitive explanation instead of cargo cult PCB advice

    thrtythreeforty, 2023-04 · Strong recommendation · in “High Speed Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design Guidelines”

  2. “go watch Rick Hartley.”

    Explains signals traveling on high-speed boards

    mordae, 2023-05 · Strong recommendation · in “The Mysterious 50 Ohm Impedance: Where It Came from and Why We Use It”

  3. “they are all worth watching in this order.”

    Part of a recommended Hartley video sequence

    aaronmdjones, 2025-07 · Strong recommendation · in “Vibe-Coding a PCB – surprisingly good”

  4. “which is still one of my all time favourite lectures ever.”

    A lecture the commenter counts among favourites ever

    dgroshev, 2026-04 · Strong recommendation · in “How I leared what a decoupling capacitor is for, the hard way”

  5. “If you want a longer talk on the topic”

    Longer talk on differential pair routing myths

    datenwolf, 2023-03 · Recommendation · in “PCIe for Hackers: The Diffpair Prelude”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: differential pairs, pcb layout, signal integrity, impedance control, emi

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