-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Cadence’s Brad Griffin Digs Deep Into DDR
February 22, 2015 | Kelly Dack, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
KD: Excellent. Let's talk about serial interfaces. Tell us where they’ve come from and where we’re going with them.
BG: One of the most interesting things in signal integrity is around the serial interfaces and it also sort of mixes with memory interface design as well, which is a parallel bus. With serial interfaces, the way that we typically check compliance on them is by running many signals which we call high-capacity simulation, and by many I mean like millions and tens of millions of bits. We're looking to see how many of those bits actually get transferred correctly. So when you go to the PCI-SIG, the special-interest group, they have a bit-error rate test that they do with hardware. Well we can do the same sort of bit error rate testing with software. Our signal integrity software supports a high-capacity simulation and then lets you look at the eye diagram and just like with PCI-SIG we have that compliance test built into our software.
There are a couple of really interesting things about what's happening in this space. One is the most popular serial interface by far, which is PCI Express. We’ve been at PCIe 3.0 for a few years now, and that’s an 8 Gb/s interface. Most people here at DesignCon are talking about up to 28 or 56 Gb/s, so 8 is a little bit behind the bleeding edge at this point. But what's going to be happening this year is PCI-SIG is going to approve the 4.0 spec, which is moving it to 16. Still maybe not on the bleeding edge, but doubling the data rate is very significant. Here’s one of the cool things we’re showing in our booth: If someone who is using 8 Gb/s today wants to see if their same hardware will support a 16 Gb/s data transfer, we can help them check that feasibility. It’s really quite interesting because you can see by default the answer is probably no, the eye is going to be closed and you’re not going to meet your bit error rate testing. But because these transceivers and receivers have such advanced equalization in them we have what's called algorithmic models that sit on both sides, transmitter and receiver, and this is the same type of stuff we’re going to see in devices that come out and support PCIe 4.0. We can turn on a level of equalization and see if when we boost that signal if we can open up that eye and see if it’s going to meet those compliance requirements that are going to be associated with doubling the date rate from 8 to 16.
That's a pretty interesting thing that's going to be happening in 2015. And when we talked about LPDDR4, that data rate is actually going to go as high as 4266, so that's going to be working in a similar way that serial links were working about two or three years ago. The same equalization that you needed in serial links a few years ago are going to be needed in memory interfaces this year. We will support that with our algorithmic modeling interface. Today we can show AMI modeling associated with DDR4 and LPDDR4 as well as, of course, serial links. It’s just tremendously exciting that, with all this different technology, we get data passed across the ether into the cloud as fast as possible. All this stuff is really exciting, and the fact that we’re able to analyze this and help customers get to market right the first time is what we're really excited about at Cadence, and the Allegro technology is providing that link to getting the product done right the first time.
KD: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today, Brad.
BG: Thank you, Kelly.
SPONSORED LINKS:
Sigrity™ Portfolio – What’s New
Accurate Power-Aware Simulation for LPDDR4
Enabling Fast and Efficient Product Creation
Cadence® Allegro® Sigrity™ Signal Integrity Integrated High-Speed Design
How a Team-Based Approach to PCB Power Integrity Analysis Yields Better Results
RELATED VIDEO:
Page 3 of 3
Suggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
05/10/2024 | Marcy LaRont, PCB007 MagazineSpring is a renewal each year as dormant flora bloom, and baby ducklings and geese are ever present in local bodies of water. Even though it is beginning to get hot, I love this time of year in Arizona, with the sun waking me around 5 a.m. It fills me with an energy that I often lose in the dark winter months. Wherever you find yourself in the world, I hope you are enjoying Spring and that you are filled with energy and enthusiasm for all the great work part of our daily lives in this industry.
Samsung Acquires Sonio; Strengthens Position in Cutting-Edge Medical Devices
05/10/2024 | SamsungSamsung Medison, a global medical equipment company and an affiliate of Samsung Electronics, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Sonio SAS, a fetal ultrasound AI software company.
Schweizer Receives Future Prize from Ewald Marquardt Private Foundation for p² Pack Embedding Technology
05/10/2024 | Schweizer Electronic AGAs the number of electric vehicles increases, so do the demands on electrical power management in vehicles. To make power generation and engine operation more efficient, Schweizer Electronic AG's p² Pack technology offers a long-term and sustainable solution to better convert and even recover the energy generated.
MKS’ Atotech to Participate in ECTC
05/10/2024 | MKS’ AtotechAt this year’s 74th IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), MKS’ Atotech will present and demonstrate its latest product and service innovations.
TTM Technologies Appoints Wajid Ali to Board of Directors
05/10/2024 | TTM Technologies, Inc.TTM Technologies, Inc. announced that Mr Wajid Ali has been appointed by the unanimous vote of the remaining Directors to serve as a new Class I director on the Board, effective immediately.