Paul, a large percentage of nets on pc boards are now differential. By using 20 mil spacing for your loosely coupled differential pairs, I don't see how you can route high density boards without using 20-30 layers, which increases cost, creates manufacturability problems, increases via capacitance, etc. The trend is to pack more and more routes in a given space. 5 mil lines with 5 mil spacing, edge coupled on stripline layers is quite common for differential pairs and works very well for 2.5Gbs signals. For the differential skew value, make sure you look at the entire path, through the BGA, connectors, vias, etc, the total lenghts may be closer than 300 mils. Regards, Fabrizio Zanella Signal Integrity EMC Corporation fzanella@xxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: pikeda@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pikeda@xxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2002 9:08 PM To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: Diff line Pravin, This is just one more argument to loosely couple your differential lines. If they have around 20 mils seperation, you can treat them as single ended and serpentining has no effect on impedance. Here is an article by Dr. Howard Johnson on why you don't need to tightly couple your diff pairs which I agree with wholeheartedly. By the way I commonly do 3.125GHz loosely coupled and they work very well. http://www.sigcon.com/news/2_30.htm Paul " pravin patel" <fairfax100@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on 02/14/2002 06:25:04 AM Please respond to fairfax100@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx cc: (bcc: Paul Ikeda/Marvell) Subject: [SI-LIST] Diff line I am doing layout of 2.5Ghz diff. line and having hard time to match length of a pair by 300 mil. I was going to make one line serpentine to make both line matched. By doing serpentine, I am creating impedance discontinuty or I will create skew. Any Ideas. Thanks -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu