With many of today's digital designs having signals in the GHz range, Signal Integrity simulation has never been more important. Design techniques that were adequate for lower frequency systems no longer work as clock rates continue to increase. FPGAs, DRAMs, busses, microprocessors and many other system elements routinely switch in the hundreds of megahertz if not gigahertz range. With today's compressed schedules and budgets, it's extremely important to get the design and layout correct the first time. Without proper SI simulation a poorly functioning system with random errors is often the end result.

A2e has the experience and tools to do both pre and post route SI simulation and advise you of the corrective steps to take. We can work with your engineers and layout personnel before and during layout to help ensure a high quality design that functions at the required speed. We typically get involved early in the project in order to perform as much modeling as possible. Although we can get involved after a board has been fabricated, total schedule and development cost are always less when SI simulation is done before the first prototype PCB is released to fabrication.

Areas of expertise

• Board layer stackup
  Selection of the appropriate number and ordering of PCB layers is critical. Material selection is equally as critical.
   
• High-speed memories
  Selection of appropriate drive characteristics, termination and trace length are important to guaranteeing freedom from glitches that would induce errors.
   
• FPGA I/Os (Rocket I/O, LVDS, SSTL, CMOS )
  FPGAs have a myriad of options for configuring high-speed I/Os. Without the proper understanding to select the appropriate parameters and the ability to correctly simulate, a poorly functioning design is almost guaranteed.
   
• Interconnect Characterization
  Not all components, connectors in particular, have an IBIS or SPICE model. Complicated 3 dimensional electromagnetic modeling packages can be used to create the parameters. However, this requires extremely expensive tools and is time consuming. We have the ability to make a simple prototype, measure S-parameters, and then use them for SI simulation saving you both cost and schedule.
   
• Multi-Gigabit Serial I/O
  Serial links in the 1 to 5 Gbps range are now common in all types of electronic systems and are replacing parallel busses. These links bring with them a new set of design issues and require a new set of skills and tools. Timing is handled in a completely different way, and transceivers com with a myriad of performance options. We are uniquely positioned to perform thorough analysis on these links to help you successfully transition into multi-gigabit design.