Question about meandering tracings on computer circuit boards

[Ernie Werbel]

On many computer circuit boards, mainly motherboards, traces will fill areas
with "S"-shaped and wavy lines that seem to meander around themselves,
rather than go in a straight path to the destination. In fact, certain (but
not all) tracings will often zig-zag (with smooth corners) while following a
direct path.

I have seen this in the past and thought nothing of it, but since I have
been building some new computer systems these past couple of weeks I have
taken the time to really notice it, but could not understand why they would
do this. Is there a technical reason for it?

 

[Mark Fortune]

On many computer circuit boards, mainly motherboards, traces will fill areas
with "S"-shaped and wavy lines that seem to meander around themselves,
rather than go in a straight path to the destination. In fact, certain (but
not all) tracings will often zig-zag (with smooth corners) while following a
direct path.

I have seen this in the past and thought nothing of it, but since I have
been building some new computer systems these past couple of weeks I have
taken the time to really notice it, but could not understand why they would
do this. Is there a technical reason for it?

I'm probably just guessing here (and hence wrong) but I imagine it has
something to do with tuning the capacitance of the tracks - or perhaps
cancelling out RF interference, these things do run at pretty high
frequencies after all.