[SI-LIST] Re: Buried Capacitance thread comments (The whole thing)

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As the Irishman said:

"Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?"


Chris Cheng wrote:

> There are those who use scare tactics to justify their consulting
> jobs and academic life and there are those who have to do real
> designs and ship products.

Yes, and I believe Mike has a track record of many successful
designs and products shipped over many years.

> What the paper didn't say is if you bury the signal trace with
> the proper reference planes and there by providing the lowest
> and tightest coupling return path, the EMI and noise will drop
> to beyond any 100's of caps or Zycon plane can provide you.

This is only correct if the same was done on the device at the
package. (i.e. the signal is launched from the die onto stripline
sandwiched between symmetric I/O power and ground planes,
or proper return path structures.)  Unfortunately, most devices
are not packaged in such a way.  The signal launch is generally
referenced primarily to one plane or the other.

In the case of an asymmetric launch, a mode has already been
established between the signaling conductor and one or more
reference conductors.  The best a board designer can do at
this point is to maintain the same return path mode on transition
from the package to the board.  In this way, mode conversion will
not occur, or be minimized.  It is mode conversion that launches
energy into the power and ground plates at the transition from the
package to the board.

Chris, you assume a purely symmetric return path at the die launch.
This is not usually the case, unless specifically designed that way.
I do agree that this would be the ideal, however impractical it might
be for most designs, due to the added cost of multiple layer buildup packages.
For  the highest performance designs one must try to keep the signal
return path continuous from package to board.  It is key to remember
that the signal return path is not necessarily the same as the power
return path.  In a perfect world, both would be the same.  Once the
signal has been launched on a waveguide structure, and the fields
have "adjusted" themselves to this condition, the wave does not care
what potential the underlying guiding structure is at (power, ground or
even floating.)

It is the transition that is important, nothing more.  For a
single ended I/O signal, the first transition which occurs is at the
die/substrate boundary.  If the transition is asymmetric, as it often
is, then some of the energy mode converts to the proper stripline or
microstrip mode onto the substrate trace, and the remainder of  the
energy mode converts to one of many power distribution modes (which
depend on the package and die design.)  It is this first mode conversion
at the die where a substantial amount of "power" noise is developed, and
is due to imperfect substrate design.  Much of system noise has it's
origins here.

The next mode conversion that occurs will be in the necessary via
transitions on the substrate as the signal winds it's way down to the
ball layer.  Mode conversions here will launch energy from the via
stack into the power and ground plate modes (assuming that power
and ground planes actually exist in a particular package).  This, again,
is totally dependent upon the design of the substrate and ball out
pattern.  The ball (and via) pattern in the region of a particular
signal escape should attempt to maintain a continuous return path
from the substrate through to the board.  (i.e. if the substrate signal
is mostly referenced to ground, then the neighboring vias and balls
should be referenced to ground.  If the signal is mostly referenced to
a particular power plane, then the neighboring vias and balls should
be referenced to that same power rail.

(The above can be quite easily verifed using full wave FDTD or
frequency domain solvers.)

If a designer has detailed knowledge regarding the package routing
and signaling reference for each signal, then an optimal PCB (or MCM)
routing solution can be generated that maintains the same launch
reference across the Package/Ball/Board interface.  ( For example, if the 
signal is
referenced to ground, then it should be referenced to ground at the
board to reduce mode conversion, noise and EMI.)

Since most mortal designers do not have access to detailed knowledge
regarding the package routing and signaling reference for each signal,
a compromise solution is possible.  What you talk about (incessantly)
Chris, is really just that, a "rule of thumb" compromise solution that
works well in all systems.  That is, to route all PCB signals as stripline
between an I/O power plane and a ground plane.  In fact, what I believe
you advocate is this structure.

-------------------- ground
-------------------- power
       ----          signal
-------------------- ground
-------------------- power

This is the best possible compromise PCB signal routing geometry, when
the designer does not have enough information to actually engineer the
correct structure, due to limitations in the packages or knowledge thereof.
It is, however, quite inefficient in terms of z-axis space utilization.  And the
method falls apart if a designer cares to utilize dual asymmetric stripline
layers to reduce overall layer count and cost.

For any signal that is launched from a package to a board, with a power and
a ground plane, there are three possible basic signal/power waveguide
modalities that can occur.  1) the signal is stripline and is between a power 
and
a ground plane.  2) the signal is microstrip or stripline and is referenced to
only a power plane.  3) the signal is a microstrip or stripline and is 
referenced
to only a ground plane.  (Actually, there are several others which we will 
neglect
for this discussion.)

Now, assuming that the package waveguide modality was maintained through
the the package vias and ballout, the "Chris Chang" method of signal routing
is optimal for only case number 1, where the signal is referenced to a power and
a ground plane.  Here this mode can be continued from the package through
to the board without mode conversion occuring.  For cases 2 and 3, Chris'
method is not optimal.  For example, a power plane referenced signal will
need to mode convert at the transition to properly attach to the ground plane
of the PCB waveguide structure.  For case 2, the perfect PCB structure would
be power referenced microstrip or stripline (between two power planes). For 
case 3,
the perfect PCB structure would be ground referenced stripline or microstrip.

For cases 2 and 3, the mode conversion is handled by local power/ground plane
pairs on either side of the stripline.  This high quality distributed low 
impedance
LC circuit quickly provides closure of the return path, facilitating minimal 
distruption
during conversion to the proper stripline mode.  Noise is created on the power
and ground planes when the mode conversion occurs.  This noise will never
be less than the optimal structure which maintains the same mode across the
entire board from package to package.

> Sprinkle in hundreds of decoupling
> capacitors with different values and in different location.
> Then put in thousands of power and ground vias mimicking
> real life package power and ground pins. Stitch ground
> vias around the edge of the board like what real world
> design. Lets see if you still have your resonance.
>

Absolutely.  All parallel plate waveguides resonate.  It is just a matter
of the interactions of all the structures involved (planes, vias, splits,
devices.)  In fact, all non perfectly terminated structures have multiple
resonant eigenmodes.  Some which can have a quite high Q.  It's fairly
easy to find the resonant modes with a VNA, a spectrum analyzer, or
with some effort with full wave board simulation software.  With some of
the new fast solver technology, we should start seeing some commercial
solutions become available in the next few years.  In that case, we will
all be able to simulate these sorts of full board problems in minutes instead of
hours or days.


regards,

scott


--
Scott McMorrow
Principal Engineer
SiQual, Signal Quality Engineering
18735 SW Boones Ferry Road
Tualatin, OR  97062-3090
(503) 885-1231
http://www.siqual.com



>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MikonCons@xxxxxxx [mailto:MikonCons@xxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 6:38 PM
> To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [SI-LIST] Buried Capacitance thread comments (The whole thing)
>
> [MLC] Sorry, Chris, but you are WAY off on this one. Check out the
> literature
> from 1989-1991 and the electronic "Product of the Year" award given to Zycon
>
> for the ZBC 2000 product (the original name) for EMI reduction. I know you
> are practicing some good design to achieve Class B certification, but good
> power/ground plane decoupling plays a major part in that success. Many
> papers
> demonstrated attenuatin of 20-30 dB over all frequencies above 40 MHz when
> using BC and DELETING over 100 0.1 Uf decoupling capacitors. (Check with Dr.
>
> Jim Howard at Sanmina, Santa Clara, CA if you doubt this.) Lee Ritchey
> commented correctly on the contribution of the planar decoupling.
> *********
> [MLC] Chris makes a key point in identifying the return path for any
> high-speed currents. However, the reference to the Zycon planes seems to be
> a
> slam at the benefits of that technology. If one studies RF techniques in
> depth, then the fact that for a given resonance frequency the Q of that
> resonance
> is decreased with increased capacitance. This is the unheralded forte of the
>
> buried capacitance concept. I have performed spectrum analyzer tests (with a
>
> tracking generator) on circular and square PCBs (11" diameter/side)
> employing
> BC that clearly demonstrated (relative to identical PCBs without BC) NO
> RESONANCE effects at high frequencies (>40 MHz). The effect of this
> characteristic is LOWER EMI that is (many times) caused by PCB dimensional
> resonances. This benefit is particularly useful for High-Tg FR-4 boards and
> higher frequency designs (>500 MHz) as the FR-4 losses play a significant
> role at the higher harmonics.
> *********
> >From the above comnments, I wish only to convey that we are all still
> learning, and an open mind is critical to solving the design challenges of
> the future.
>
> Mike
>
> Michael L. Conn
> Owner/Principal Consultant
>
> Mikon Consulting
>
>                    *** Serving Your Needs with Technical Excellence ***
>
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