decoupling-capacitor
Many IC's I've seen suggest decoupling capacitors across Vdd to Vss – this is sensible.
However some IC's for example the dsPIC33FJ128GP802 has THREE Vss pins and only two Vdd pins (AVdd and Vdd.) So would I put a decoupling capacitor on each Vdd pin, or from each Vdd pin to each Vss pin?
The designers did a perfect job in the pin assignment:
Each of the power pins is right next to a ground pin; you can't get better than that! All you have to do is place the caps on each of the pin pairs, as close as possible to the pins.
While not exactly what you're looking for, I have used power-management ICs to accomplish this. For instance, the TPS2113APW. I prefer this specific chip because it allows me to make dual-powered devices that can operate with either a wall-wart or off the USB, automatically preferring wall-power if it is available.
If you don't need dual-powered, you could use something like the MIC2545A
Ultimately, any capacitance "behind" the power-management IC (i.e. hooked up to the IC outputs) isn't "seen" by the USB; the bus only sees the capacitance "in front of" the IC (i.e. hooked up to IC inputs).
You still have to worry about inrush current - the "plus any capacitive effects visible through the regulator" part of the spec - but those ICs also have variable current limiting. Figure out the parallel resistances that you need to have 100 mA limitation and 500 mA limitation (and optionally n mA limitation if you want to limit wall-power), and then use FETs to short out the resistors as needed to enable various limitations.
Through these chips, I have attached PCBs with several hundreds of uF to the USB, and a DMM set to fast current max verified that the inrush during attachment did not exceed 100 mA.
Best Answer
I believe the general rule is 1 cap per Vdd pin.
Are you using a ground plane? If so, don't bother attaching the caps to Vss pins. However, if you are using a ground bus instead, then yeah you should attach the cathode of the caps directly to Vss.