 If you look closely at a board's traces, you may be surprised at the variety of shapes and styles you find. Against the mostly straight lines, these folded curves look a little strange. But they start to make more sense when you consider the tight timing constraints required by the board's fast processor. With signals potentially operating in the gigahertz range, trace length becomes an important variable. If the trace is too short, you may have, say, a clock signal arriving too early at an input pin. So by simply extending the length of a trace, a signal can be delayed to better synchronize with the rest of the board and meet those tough timing constraints. And all those rounded corners ensure that the trace maintains a consistent width and consistent signal characteristics as a result.