Hi Joerg,

"Joerg" wrote in message
...
When I have the luxury of a 4-layer I usually drop vias where needed. No
routing ground traces back and stuff.

OK, that makes good sense.

Ok, specialty caps can work. But we all know how it goes later. Someone from
purchasing finds a much more "economical" part, a rep sweet-talks them into
it, you are on vacation and someone signs the ECO ... poof.

In my case I think there's a greater chance that someone will take the X5R/X7R
ceramic cap and find that... hey... there's this other "ceramaic cap" that's
much cheaper... let's use it! ...and it turns out to be a Y5V.

Clients who insist on assembly in high-wage countries must often eat
placement costs of several cents per part and that requires a whole
different design strategy.

Better the money goes to boutique capacitor manufacturers than assemblers?

(regarding C3)
I never use such caps at all.

Any ideas why the folks at Linear do? Am I correct in thinking that it's a
bit of a "speed up" cap/high-pass filter that's meant to provide improved
transient response? It seems as though usually the transient response is
going to be determined by C2/R3/C1 anyway.

Then again, I rarely use integrated switchers that are single-sourced.

Any suggestion on multi-sourced/readily avaialble ICs that are small (I'm sure
the PCB layout guy would already be throwing a fit at SO-8 sized) and fast
(1MHz so that the inductor can be small)?

---Joel