Streamlining High-Speed Channel Design with Simulation

Dr. Klaus Krohne received his electrical engineering degree (Dipl.-Ing.) from the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany in 2001 and a PhD Degree (Dr. sc.) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 2007. From 2007 to 2009, he worked as a research fellow at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing in Singapore. He is now CST’s Market Development Manager for EDA.

When designing of high-speed serial channels, engineers often find that multi-GB/s signals behave much in the same way as RF signals and that the three-dimensional structure of the transmission channel (vias, reference planes, connectors, and so on) becomes important. High-fidelity 3D electromagnetic simulation has been used in the design process by RF engineers for decades, and the same techniques can also be used to model high-speed serial channels. 

This Webinar will show how to use 3D electromagnetic simulation at all stages in the design flow. It will show how to optimize reference plane changes and make early stage design decisions such as layer stackup, via backdrilling, or trace separation that are difficult to change at a later stage. 

At the other end of the design process is the verification / sign-off stage. One problem that plagues sign-off engineers is that not all components of the transmission channel are under their control and that high-fidelity simulation models of those components can be hard to come by. We will discuss what to do in such cases and how to make reasonable assumptions about unknown components.