Signal Integrity analysis

Racing against the clock and faced with the increasing rise/fall time of logic (e.g. for DDR2 and DDR3 designs), most of today's high-speed designers must be concerned with the signal integrity of their designs. Sintecs provides signal integrity analysis services to help you address these issues.

Signal Integrity activities In the past, many companies completed their high-speed designs by employing a high-speed expert to advise the layout designer on the routing of critical signals. If applied at all, signal integrity analysis tools were run against the resulting layout and any problems were solved interactively. This was a satisfactory, but expertise-intensive approach for many companies. As interface speeds exceed 1GHz and edge rates drop below 100ps, new methods must be adopted. In such high-end designs, interfaces can connect several CPUs and span several boards.

High-speed behavior is no longer limited to a few critical signals and can often affect more than 80% of the signals on the board. Each major net/bus must be considered as an entity and a strategy developed for implementing the signals for each net/bus.

Transmission line behavior has become so complex that simulation is essential to augment designer experience. Manufacturing tolerances (e.g. slow/fast devices or the allowable range of characteristic impedance) must be taken into account to ensure that the resulting design can function within specifications under all possible worst-case conditions.

Traditional analysis Traditional post-layout analysis is no longer enough to guarantee design success. Designers must be able to evaluate alternative layout strategies before layout begins, taking into account allowable manufacturing tolerances. As a strategy for each net/bus is developed, rules are defined for a layout that ensures that the net/bus will work under real world conditions.

By using high-speed design, analysis and verification techniques early in the design cycle, designers can eliminate layout iterations and ensure that products are marketed on time.