Joel, Just one quick comments to the good summary from Steve: While considering planes and bypass capacitors in terms of effective capacitances and inductances is a valid approach, we need to keep in mind that focusing on the capacitive or inductive nature of parts without looking at the wider picture misses a very important and useful class of solutions, namely that of matched transmission lines. As it was pointed out earlier several times on the SI list, the best (self) impedance for a power distribution network is a resistive one, neither capacitive, nor inductive. We can get resistive impedance from a matched transmission line, regardless of its capacitance and inductance, and in such cases the notion of 'service area' of parts become meaningless: you can put bypass components further away from the active devices without sacrificing performance. Regards, Istvan Novak SUN Microsystems Joel Brown wrote: > Interplane capacitance is frequently cited as the only effective bypass > capacitance on a PCB at frequencies above 200 MHz. > I am currently working on a design which brings up some questions regarding > interplane capacitance. > > 1. Power planes normally carry "standard" voltage rails that are used > throughout a board such as +5V and +3.3V. > High speed ICs usually have core voltages that are local to the IC and are > provided by a local regulator which converts the standard rail to the core > voltage (example 3.3 to 1.8V). > The local core voltage is distributed on a plane area that is local to the > IC and therefore is small in area (0.25 sq in or less) which results in a > very small amount of interplane capacitance. > Is this very small amount of capicitance effective for bypassing the IC? I > am sure it depends somewhat on the current waveform being drawn by the IC > but this can only be estimated because semiconductor manufacturers do not > provide current consumption profile as a function of frequency. To make > matters worse, some ICs have several different VCC pins which the > manufacturer recommends connecting to separate networks of bypass caps and > ferrite beads. This cuts the power distributuion up even more resulting in > less (practically zero) interplane capacitance. It is somewhat ironic that > the the voltages such as +5V and +3.3V which are required at points across > the whole board and therefore have the most interplane capacitance are also > the voltages which have least requirement for interplane capacitance because > they do not directly supply high speed rails. > > 2. There has been a lot of emphasis on reducing the mounted inductance of > bypass capacitors. Even with this reduced inductance they are still only > effective up to several hundereds of MHz at which point the interplane > capacitance becomes the only bypass capacitance mechanism. However there is > inductance between the connection of the IC to the planes. This inductance > consists of vias and package inductance. I did look for some numbers for > package inductance and did not find much, it seems to be a closely held > secret. Also it is unknown how much bypass capacitnace is internal to the IC > package. Just for example if we assume 250pH for the vias and 500 pH for the > package, then the impedance at 500 MHz would be 2.36 Ohms. This seems rather > high for the interplane capacitance to be of much benefit. > > In summary how much interplane capacitance is needed to be beneficial, and > why is it beneficial given the inductance in the vias and package? > > Thanks - Joel > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > 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 technical documents are available at: > http://www.si-list.net > > 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 technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.net 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