Brian, Why not design a flex with cross-hatched planes? You have to be careful about placing your signals w.r.t. the holes, on both sides of the plane, but you should be able to adjust for 65 ohms and get the performance that you need with a laminate like Pyralux FR, which has an Er of 3.05. No matter what, you're going to have to do some significant modeling to make this mess work. Scott Scott McMorrow Teraspeed Consulting Group LLC 121 North River Drive Narragansett, RI 02882 (401) 284-1827 Business (401) 284-1840 Fax http://www.teraspeed.com Teraspeed® is the registered service mark of Teraspeed Consulting Group LLC Sexton, Brian M. (US SSA) wrote: > In reading the PCI specification for 66MHz cPCI backplanes, it states > one should use 65 ohms for the bussed signals. I believe that COTS > backplanes use a recipe like this with traditional strip-line > construction. It also states the 66MHz backplanes should be 5 slots or > less. > =20 > We need to design a 5-slot cPCI rigid-flex-rigid backplane which also > includes routing for lots of 100 ohm differential I/O pairs. It is only > the I/O that crosses the flex. The cPCI section is the traditional 0.8" > pitch using the normal hard metric connectors in one of the rigid > sections. =20 > =20 > My problem is that it takes (4) double sided flex layers for all the I/O > signals that cross between the hard boards. At 5 mils dielectric per > flex, it is almost impossible to make the 65 ohms on those layers. If I > use a traditional 65 ohm stripline for the PCI signals, and only use the > flex layers for the I/O, my backplane will be greater than 0.200" thick. > > =20 > My question is how well a 66HMz cPCI would work running the signals at > 50 ohms. Does anyone have any experience with this? I'm not sure how > much margin is in the 65 recipe in the spec, and I don't have good > models for the connectors and such to trust a simulation. > =20 > My only other idea was to stackup the PCI area differently than the rest > of the backplane and essentially make them asymmetrical striplines using > a plane-void-signal-plane, where the I/O would be more of a plane-signal > plane stackup. No signals would need to cross a stack up change. > However, some people have been worried about the manufacturing yield of > doing it. > > Thanks for your help. > Brian > > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > 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