Latest Posts
Serial Link Equalization Primer
Author: Donald Telian , SI Guys - Guest Blogger
Equalization is powerful. SerDes Serializer-Deserializer Equalization has enabled data rates we would not have thought possible, and it continues to be the secret sauce of
serial links. While good performance depends on doing basic things in hardware Steps 1 to 6 , it is arguably the configuration of SerDes Equalization Settings SES, Step 7 that determines eye margins - as illustrated in Fixing Signal Integrity Issues in Software . As such, SI an...
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Donald Telian, SiGuys - Guest Blogger
1/14/2020
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Understanding Connector and Package Impedance
Author: Donald Telian , SI Guys - Guest Blogger
I've grown accustomed to viewing passive interconnect as the
road signals drive on. Impedance
discontinuities appear as the speed bumps or potholes that make the ride bumpy
and unpleasant, if not slower. Perhaps
I've looked at too many TDR
plots ? For many years our industry
has been well-tooled to understand and manage PCB
trace impedance , which continues to define the majority of the "road" signals travel on. Over time higher data
rates have c...
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Donald Telian, SiGuys - Guest Blogger
12/9/2019
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On Exercising Engineering Judgment
Author: Donald Telian , SI Guys - Guest Blogger
Signal Integrity Engineering requires Engineering Judgment. The same thing that makes SI
require Creativity causes it to also require above average Judgment; namely
that you will consistently be asked to craft clear answers from insufficient
data based on ill-defined measures of success. There’s no way around it, Engineering Judgment Required. So we’ll address this topic here in our
mini-series on the soft
skills required for Signal I...
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Donald Telian, SiGuys - Guest Blogger
11/8/2019
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On Working WITH Your Layout Engineer
Author: Donald Telian , SI Guys - Guest Blogger
I have a distant cousin who spent his career doing high-speed
PCB layout. At a family gathering we
were learning what each other did for a living, and when he learned I’m in
Signal Integrity he looked at me warily. I was one of those guys. He
then shared how we was going crazy routing, re-routing, and re-routing a
high-speed PCB because an SI Engineer was giving him constraints that were
impossible to meet. Lots of time wasted,
and he was c...
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Donald Telian, SiGuys - Guest Blogger
10/8/2019
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What is Signal Integrity?
Author: Donald Telian , SI Guys - Guest Blogger
Great question. Now
that I’ve devoted well over 30 years to the field, I’ll venture an answer. My simplistic definition has always been the
analog side of digital. I still like
that description, because in practice the binary world of ones and zeroes
only exists in theory. And, hopefully,
in system memory - assuming the interface’s Signal Integrity SI was done
correctly.
My answer to the question will describe Signal Integri...
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Donald Telian, SiGuys - Guest Blogger
8/5/2019
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The History of IBIS
Author: Donald Telian , SI Guys - Guest Blogger Every time I sit down to simulate a PCB, quickly download IBIS models and produce meaningful results in minutes, I am still amazed. I can’t help but think about how things used to be, back when all this wasn’t possible. Not only were simulators slow and cumbersome, component-level device models simply did not exist. True, there were a few transistor-level models around, but using them made simulation even more slow and cumbersome. There...
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Donald Telian, SiGuys - Guest Blogger
7/11/2019
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