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PCB design glossary

PCB

AKA: printed circuit board

Printed Circuit Board — the physical board that holds components and routes signals between them.

A PCB is the physical implementation of a circuit. It consists of one or more conductive copper layers separated by insulating FR4, with components mounted on the outer layers and signals routed as traces and vias.

Common stack-ups are 2-layer (cheapest, for simple boards) and 4-layer (necessary for high-speed signals or denser designs). Higher layer counts (6, 8, 12+) are common in production hardware.

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