Here is a good ground bounce demonstration. If you have been to one of the signal integrity classes, you will know about ground bounce. And VCC bounce. It’s one of these bad things that really can ruin a project.

This group of students is lucky enough to have Eric Bogatin as their instructor, and obviously, they go through ground bounce as well. They even build a board showing that effect. Some of the students got inspired to write a small piece for the Signal Integrity journal: “We Live in White Space“. A fast and easy read.

When we do the local engineering university (DTU, Danish Technical University outside Copenhagen) summer course on signal integrity, there is a similar lab exercise. This includes both a board layout by the students and some measurements on a lab board that can demonstrate this effect. This is the lab board we use:

We should maybe include a number of eval boards from various chip vendors, as the bigger (BGA) devices are too much to put on a student board in the class setting – yet may still have a significant ground bounce or VCC bounce.

What bigger device have you used recently with a significant ground bounce that we can use for an even better ground bounce demonstration?