I think they are called PCIe I II III and FBDIMM. Or whatever RAMBUS called their latest ..... In any case, before we say the sky is falling, let's put things in perspective and consider your average memory controller, FSB IC package I/O power delivery. What is the typical signal to power/ground pin ratio ? What is the loop inductance of those package power/ground pins and die to package redistribution (or God forbid a wire bond) to signal multiplied by the signal to ground/power ratio ? How do those highly perforated package planes compared with your 80mohm PCB planes ? How does your average DIMM socket power/ground inductance looks like ? Or inductance of those cheap BGA package on DDRXX device ? If the signal edge can even be generated from your package I/O power delivery and goes through the package, chances are it will make it through your PCB reference plane PROVIDED you have at least a good reference ground plane with proper return vias and I/O pad return capacitance. As usual, I am just a dumb lazy engineer who don't like to pay and do unnecessary things when I think the limitation is in other places. ________________________________ From: Scott McMorrow [mailto:scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Sat 3/15/2008 8:10 AM To: Chris Cheng Cc: istvan novak; steve weir; Joel Brown; SILR; Istvan Novak; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Chris Now tell the memory, processor and chipset vendors that and get their buy-in to switch from Single Ended to Differential data lines. 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 <http://www.teraspeed.com/> Teraspeed® is the registered service mark of Teraspeed Consulting Group LLC Chris Cheng wrote: There is a very cost effective way to eliminate signal induced plane resonance. It is call differential signal. Differential mode is orders of magnitude smaller vs. common mode noise injection into planes. ________________________________ From: istvan novak [mailto:Istvan.Novak@xxxxxxx] Sent: Fri 3/14/2008 7:31 PM To: Chris Cheng Cc: steve weir; Joel Brown; SILR; Istvan Novak; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Chris, This seems to be one of those topics, which are governed by beliefs and it is hard to convince each other. The important thing is that people understand the physics behind the circuit and the way how various options can be used to solve the task. From that point on it is the designer's responsibility to weigh the constraints and the options and to come up with a working design. Regarding plane resonances, you are correct in saying that if you do not excite them, they make no harm. However, if there is a cost-effective way to eliminate them, I rather choose to eliminate the resonances rather than worrying that they dont get excited. Regards, Istvan Chris Cheng wrote: Ok, now we eliminate the claim that core power distribution needs fancy PCB planes and decoupling solutions at the PCB level. As you say if the core plane is used as reference planes, what controls your plane capacitance/loop inductance ? The impedance control for the stripline that they sandwich or your fancy power plane scheme ? This whole plane resonance also borders me. A few months ago we have already have long discussion here about a CAD tool vendor and another company's paper claiming plane resonances in simulation and measurement. As I have pointed out then and I will repeat again now, that was just a matter of via placement for signal return rather than real plane resonance. Both the measure and simulation conditions were set at an unrealistic condition to scare people into thinking there is a plane resonance problem. I have always maintain signal return issue on PCB is a matter of proper reference plane and return via placement, NOT fancy decoupling. If you shoot yourself in the foot and then run around claiming you need a fancy stretcher, I really have nothing more to add. -----Original Message----- From: Istvan.Novak@xxxxxxx [mailto:Istvan.Novak@xxxxxxx] Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 6:31 PM To: Chris Cheng Cc: steve weir; Joel Brown; SILR; Istvan Novak; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Chris, You are right; if we speak about a single point-of-load CPU core power distribution, we *may* not need to worry about high-frequency behavior on the board. However, as always, it depends. IF your power rail feeds only the particular CPU core, AND you do not use those planes as signal reference, AND if you do not need to go through this plane cavity with vias of sensitive signals, all you need is a low-frequency design, because the connecting inductance between the board and die filters out the high-frequency noise. However, when signal quality may be impacted by the plane resonances (for instance because the core plane is also used as a return plane), it is a good idea to make a design that creates a decent impedance profile up to the relevant bandwidth of the signal. Regards, Istvan Chris Cheng wrote: Steve, What if the package of any IC act as a low pass filter that has a cut off at 100MHz or lower that seperate the fancy 80mohm PDN and the actual IC load ? What can all those highspeed caps and the transmission line planes do to help the IC ? At 100MHz or below, do I still need to worry about transmission line mode or just place the caps and regulator close enough and use a lump model ? If I look at the power decoupling requirements of the latest highspped CPU's, I am not sure if they even border to ask for 100MHz or above decoupling caps on the PCB other than for filters ? May be above 100MHz core power decoupling at system PCB level is not neccessary ? I certainly have done a few that suggest so. Chris _____ From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of steve weir Sent: Fri 3/14/2008 12:24 AM To: Joel Brown Cc: 'SILR'; 'Istvan Novak'; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Joel, a driver pumping into an infinitely long, or ideally terminated transmission line never sees a far end because no energy ever reflects back. A PDN that is arranged to look like an ideal infinite transmission structure, similarly reflects nothing back to the load. All the load sees is the characteristic resistive Z of the transmission structure it is attached to. Best Regards, Steve. Joel Brown wrote: I hate to prolong this but... When I think about a transmission line in the normal sense (signal propagation), A driver switches at one end but initially all it sees is Zo which looks like a resistor maybe 50 ohms and it does not even see the load until wave propagates the length of the line. So there is a time delay.. Now think of the driver being the power pin of the IC and the load being the bypass cap on the corner of the board or visa versa and I see a propagation delay, so what am I missing? Joel -----Original Message----- From: SILR [ mailto:silr@xxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 6:27 PM To: 'steve weir'; 'Joel Brown' Cc: 'Istvan Novak'; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Joel asked: <<< ...why is charge propagation velocity not a factor when the PDN is purely resistive? >>> Well, here's a crazy way to think about this (which I'm sure not everyone will agree)... I guess this would be like how Eric B. might put it... "Be the Signal" I'm the charge on some corner of a board...there's an IC in the middle of the board... I have to get to that IC using this transmission line called the PDN. If this Transmission Line had the classical Ls and Cs (and Rs) to describe its characteristics, then that means I have to deal with changing EM fields to get to that IC... but these time varying EM fields always cause some delay in my charge getting to that IC in a timely manner... BUT!!! ...if this Transmission Line had nothing but Rs (no Ls and Cs) to describe its characteristics then that means I don't have to deal with time varying EM fields any longer... I just have to deal with resistive losses only but this only equates to a drop in Static Voltage Potential and nothing more... (so keep the Z low!!!) And I can get there (to the IC) in no time and the IC gets the charges that it needs and it wouldn't even know anything is different... Again, this is a crazy way to look at this... but it works for me, for now... until I get grilled by the senior members... :-) Silvester -----Original Message----- From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [ mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of steve weir Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 5:57 PM To: Joel Brown Cc: 'Istvan Novak'; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Joel, it is transmission line theory. Think about an infinitely long signal transmission line for a moment. At any instant a driver sees a constant impedance across frequency. The voltage to current relation is independent of prior history. What Istvan describes is a very low impedance transmission structure for power. Sadly, a lot of IC vendors are still playing catch-up in terms of power delivery. If they had their game together, they would be telling you: The actual voltage tolerances at the die, the current spectrum at the die, and the parasitics of the die and package. From that you could engineer your PDN. Instead often what we see are partial recipes like you describe. On a good day the recipes cost extra money. On a bad day, they result in failures. One can build a resistive networks several ways. One is to add discrete resistance by any number of methods, another is to use the FDTIM method that Larry Smith has long championed. And even though resistive networks have attractive qualities, reactive networks may still be cheaper and equally effective. It all depends on the circumstances. It is somewhat akin to surface finishes: there is no ideal one. But there are several that when used properly work very well. One just needs to respect the limitations of each method. Part of the problem figuring this stuff out is having sufficient experience to judge trade-offs early in the design process. That's just something that has to be learned. As more training materials come out on power delivery, it will probably get easier. In the shameless plug department, we ( Teraspeed ) do very nice jobs optimizing power delivery systems for customers. If you've got a design you want advice on we can get you squared-up pretty quickly. Best Regards, Steve. Joel Brown wrote: Steve, So even though each cap has a relatively high ESR (1.6 Ohms) the PDN as a whole has a relatively low impedance which will result in low noise on the PDN. This goes against intuition and previous thinking that an IC needs a local bypass with low ESR and ESL to supply the needed charge during switching transients. I am starting to see that mathematically a resistive PDN lowers noise compared to one that is the inductive (you did a good job explaining that). The thing that I am having trouble grasping or visualizing is that why is charge propagation velocity not a factor when the PDN is purely resistive? Is the PDN model simply a resistor in series with the load and distance has no effect? Perhaps there is an analogy that would make this concept easier to understand? Also, when I see app notes from IC vendors that recommend using a 0.1uF and 1000pF cap on each supply pin and then instead I use distributed high ESR capacitors I feel like I am doing something quite different and contrary from the recommended and when I query the vendors on how they arrived at recommendations in the app note the answer I get is "we recommend that you do it exactly as shown in the app note, we know it works that way and if you don't follow it it may not work". Also I am wondering how all this relates to X2Y caps, I suppose they could be used with series resistors but that would somewhat defeat the purpose by adding inductance. Its not clear to me what approaches I should attempt on future designs. Joel -----Original Message----- From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [ mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of steve weir Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 11:26 PM To: Doug Brooks Cc: Istvan Novak; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: Antwort: Re: Questions about interplane capacitance Doug, Istvan's representations are analytically exact. When the characteristic impedance of the transmission structure is high, and/or the rise times are slow then capacitors can be placed in close enough proximity that they load the transmission structure so as to make it appear a lower impedance with some little bumps. For example if one had a 10" x 10" 4 mil er4.0 board = 22.5nF and loaded it with bypass every square inch of 150pH, then for slow enough signals, the distributed impedance would look like 80mOhms. If the network were constructed from 200 capacitors, an ESR value of 1.6Ohms / cap would make that impedance uniform down to the RC knee of the parts. Assume that were matched by an AVP regulator of 80mOhms and the entire thing looks like 80mOhms from DC to over 1GHz. 80mOhms would support a 32 bit transition w/ about 5% droop. The impedance scales with dielectric height and the inverse square root of eR. Scale the dielectric down to 0.1mils and now 320 lines can switch simultaneously in one direction with 5% droop, and at arbitrary edge rates. Istvan has shown using analysis with the reverse pulse technique an inductive PDN shunt impedance acts like a noise high pass filter ( See DC papers from at least as far back as DC East 2005 ). Put in a square wave noise pulse ( load current ) and the leading edge changes by Vdelta = -L*di/dt below the baseline. Allow the pulse to persist long enough and the system recovers back to the baseline which would be -I*Rpdn. Return the load current to zero, and now the energy stored in the inductance kicks back -L*di/dt. The p-p noise is then 2*Ldi/dt - (Imax-Imin)*Rpdn. If Rpdn is very small then it approximates 2*Ldi/dt. This behavior is apparent in the transient response plots of virtually any non-AVP VRM. Now, suppose that the VRM and PDN can be made to appear resistive right through Fknee. Then the response to a current pulse of I is simply Vdelta = -I*Rpdn. There is no component of di/dt, and so the total p-p noise is just (Imax - Imin)*Rpdn. AVP schemes position the DC operating point intentionally high so that at Imin they are at their margined high limits and at Imax they are at their low limits. This allows increasing Rpdn while still meeting the same current and voltage specifications. Best Regards, Steve. Doug Brooks wrote: Istvan, With all due respect, I would modify your argument a little bit. In very simplistic terms, suppose we need x amount of charge to transition from a zero to a one in one ns. That amount of charge (I suggest) must be within 6 inches of the need (what I think we are referring to as the service radius). If not, it takes a little longer to reach the logical one state. I look at it, not from the standpoint of a dip in the rail, as much as the ability to satisfy the rise time requirement (unless you are referring to a dip in the rail that occurs during the rise time itself.) In the slightly longer term, the charge will replenish fairly quickly, but not, perhaps fast enough to meet the rise time requirement. Doug Brooks Andreas, Yes and no. It is true that charge moves with finite speed, so for any given time duration the charge has to come from locations closer than the ratio of distance over speed. BUT the whole notion of service radius is based on the assumption that as you deplete the charge available in the immediate vicinity of the active device, you have to wait for replenishment, otherwise you get a big dip on the supply rail. Having a matched transmission medium to deliver power to the active device, the charge moves without interruption, and as you deplete the planes close to the device, it gets replenished on the fly from areas further away, so the service area concept is pretty much meaningless in this scenario. Current flows without interruption. The bucket brigade of infinitesimally small inductive and capacitive elements of the transmission line transmits the power continuously. If the load current changes, for any I(t) time function of load current, the transient noise at the load point will be I(t)*Zo, where we assume that Zo is the resistive and frequency independent characteristic impedance of the transmission medium. This is a very simplistic one-dimensional model, but it gives a good insight of why the service radius matters only on PDNs where the network is not matched. Regards, Istvan Novak SUN Microsystems Andreas.Lenkisch@xxxxxxxxxx wrote: Istvan, I'm wodering a little about your comments to the service radius. Independant if the impedance is resistive, we have still a propagation time which would limit the service radius from my understanding. Do I'm wrong? regards Andreas Istvan Novak <istvan.novak@xxxxxxxxxxx> <mailto:istvan.novak@xxxxxxxxxxx> Gesendet von: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 11.03.2008 13:14 An Joel Brown <joel@xxxxxxxxxx> <mailto:joel@xxxxxxxxxx> Kopie si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Thema [SI-LIST] Re: Questions about interplane capacitance 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 <http://www.si-list.net/> <http://www.si-list.net/> <http://www.si-list.net/> <http://www.si-list.net/> <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: 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