[SI-LIST] Re: anlog and digital power plane isolation with ferrite bead good idea?

  • From: "Cheng, Chris" <chris.cheng@xxxxxx>
  • To: Tom Dagostino <tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, 'Joel Brown' <joel@xxxxxxxxxx>, 'Dan Smith' <Dan.Smith@xxxxxxxxx>, 'steve weir' <weirsi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 00:08:52 +0000

First off I have to apologize for tangenting off from the original discussion 
which is isolating digital and analog power planes with beads. Personally I 
don't believe in them for most of the situations and at most something like a 
trench and a draw bridge will probably work.
But too many discussions about applying beads in PLL filtering followed and I 
think we need to clarify a few points.
There always two opposite sides of PLL loop bandwidth trade off, jitter 
transfer vs. jitter accumulation.
If you come from the current SerDes designers, you will most likely believe in 
jitter transfer and cut your loop bandwidth to as low as you can do.
If you come from the classic PLL applications such as CPU or ASIC internal 
clocks, you will most likely be more concern about core noise and jitter 
accumulation.
I happened to come from the later school so a natural thing to do is to push 
the loop bandwidth of the PLL to as high as possible without sacrificing phase 
margin too much. The beauty of it is the PLL then can self correct its jitter 
up to near the PLL loop bandwidth. The side effect of this is you can easily 
build an internal regulator with modest damping and pretty much clean up the 
jitter from low to all the way to near the loop bandwidth frequency. This is 
when the external power filtering become interesting. Because the frequency 
needing protection is relatively high, the ferrite bead is ideal for the 
application because it has high loss at those high frequency. That would also 
allows a relatively small capacitor to form the filter tree and it makes a 
great compact external filter. The ESR of the bead can be spec to relatively 
low to avoid the DC drop but I found sometimes I need a small series resistor 
just to keep the Q low enough. That was the original design when we first 
investigate this PLL jitter accumulation effects in the late 80's and published 
the app notes for our then ASIC vendors.
If you come from the "fear everything from the source jitter transfer so let's 
drop bandwidth as low as we can" camp, well, then why are you worry about 
jitter accumulation and build the power filter trees in the first place ? 
That's like breaking your right leg and then complain about why can't you 
run......
But that's a debate we have to wait for the next time.

Happy New Year,

Chris Cheng
Distinguished Technologist , Electrical
Hewlett-Packard Company

+1 510 413 5977 / Tel
chris.cheng@xxxxxx / Email
4209 Technology Dr
Fremont, CA 94538
USA




-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Tom Dagostino
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 10:11 PM
To: 'Joel Brown'; 'Dan Smith'; 'steve weir'
Cc: 'Lee Ritchey'; 'Dong Kim'; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Istvan Novak'; 
'liuluping 41830'
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: anlog and digital power plane isolation with ferrite 
bead good idea?

I find the "follow the reference design" approach very iffy at best.  Any
filter that is places between the "outside world" and the PLL or whatever
only reduces the noise from the outside world by XdB(f).  So if the noise
the IC vendor had in the reference design was only 50 mV and your outside
world is at 100 mV or has a different frequency content you may have an
issue.  You need specs for what the chip can tolerate, not a cook book
design.

Tom Dagostino
Teraspeed Labs
13610 SW Harness Lane
Beaverton, OR 97008
503-430-1065
tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.teraspeed.com

Teraspeed Consulting Group LLC
121 North River Drive
Narragansett, RI 02882
401-284-1827
www.teraspeed.com


-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Joel Brown
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 7:09 PM
To: 'Dan Smith'; 'steve weir'
Cc: 'Lee Ritchey'; 'Dong Kim'; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Istvan Novak';
'liuluping 41830'
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: anlog and digital power plane isolation with ferrite
bead good idea?

I encounter this very frequently when it comes to designing with parts that
have separate analog and/or PLL power rails. It is very common for
manufacturers of these parts to recommend either in a datasheet, application
note or reference design to use a ferrite bead which in theory could reduce
the noise that is present on the digital power supplies. Sometimes a
manufacturers P/N is given for the ferrite bead and sometimes no information
is given. For me when dealing with a vendor a typical scenario would be like
this:

Submit a question to mysupport.com "what are the noise and ripple
requirement of the analog and PLL power inputs"

Answer one week later "Just follow the reference design, we have tested it
and it works. If you don't follow it then good luck".

My options are as follows:

Do a PDN analysis of the whole board and determine if the noise is low
enough to directly connect the analog and/or PLL to the digital power.
In reality this is a guesstimate because you can with some serious work
determine with some degree of accuracy the PDN impedance but no IC
manufacturer will tell you the input power current vs frequency
characteristics of their part which is what you need to know what the noise
voltage will actually be.

Do an analysis of the ferrite / capacitor network to see how it behaves and
look for problems like resonances.

Replace or supplement the ferrite bead with a linear regulator to further
reduce the noise. This only works for certain frequencies that the regulator
will reject input noise.

In the end whatever I choose to do, I think making noise measurements on the
actual circuit is probably the most useful piece of information. If I didn't
get it right then I can tweak the ferrite or capacitors to get it working.
This hasn't happened yet.

Its too bad that the manufacturers of ICs can't come up with some
standardized way specifying current and noise on power pins. Everybody has
IBIS or SPICE models of the signal I/O pins but when it comes to power it's
a black hole.

Joel





-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Dan Smith
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 1:34 PM
To: steve weir
Cc: Lee Ritchey; Dong Kim; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Istvan Novak; liuluping
41830
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: anlog and digital power plane isolation with ferrite
bead good idea?

Steve that is a good point.  Dong, in my experience the most difficult piece
of the design (of late, all my designs) is getting the requirements out of
the vendors.  I use a common spreadsheet that I customize for each chip.  I
then ask the vendor to fill in all the blanks for me and those blanks are
P/S ripple requirements over which frequencies that their chips is
guaranteed to work.  With that, you have the requirements feeding into your
PDS design as Steve mentions.  In one case I did have to meet a 0.5% ripple
requirement (yeah, not a typo although I didn't believe it) so I did add one
RC filter to a low current pin.  But that has only been once in the last 5
designs I did.

I am empathetic with you because the vendor climb as described above is very
steep (and for me, I still haven't reached the top... :-) ).  At this point
I would say slightly better than half of the vendors now give me this
information.

Regards,

Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: steve weir [mailto:weirsi@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 1:08 PM
To: Dan Smith
Cc: Lee Ritchey; Dong Kim; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Istvan Novak; liuluping
41830
Subject: Re: [SI-LIST] Re: anlog and digital power plane isolation with
ferrite bead good idea?

Dan, ferrite beads are way too often used where they are not needed, and
are way too often applied without proper consideration to managing their
side-effects.  This frequently gets people into trouble, and likely
contributed to the failure you experienced.

The problem Dong presents includes lack of: requirements specification,
design information, and expertise on the part of Dong.  Dong's
misgivings may well be justified.  However, if Dong goes ahead and
designs a PDN without working against a set of requirements, if he is
successful it will only be by happenstance.  That neither vindicates,
nor refutes his colleague's design.

If Dong's colleague has done his homework, then Dong's colleague can
show Dong that:

1. The design meets a stated set of requirements obtained either from
vendor specifications, and/or measurements.
2. The use of ferrite beads made it easier to meet those requirements.

The places where ferrite beads make sense are very distinct.  Usually,
no more than casual inspection of PDN requirements immediately indicate
whether a ferrite bead based filter is worth considering.  Assuming that
Dong's colleague did his homework, it should be very easy for him to
point Dong at the requirements that led to use of a ferrite bead and to
challenge Dong to find a better alternate solution.  If on the other
hand, the PDN engineer has simply followed a cookbook recipe then
whether the design works or not depends on how well that recipe
encompasses the variables such as:  component placement, stack-up, and
other loads on the same power rail(s) in the implementation.

Steve.

Dan Smith wrote:
> Dong,
>
> The best way to convince him, perhaps, is to ignore his advice and do a
proper PDS design like you want to.  Then, when the results come in prove it
to him based on your evidence.  I have been doing 3GIG and 10GIG SERDES
designs for 8 years and only used ferrite beads once.  That was my first
SERDES design and I too followed advice of someone else - It was also the
only time my SERDES design didn't work!  Since, I have never used a ferrite
bead (initially ignoring several people and doing my own engineering) and
have been successful for the last 7 years - including across backplanes.
The key, though, is performing a PDS (which includes instantaneous currents
and a stable power supply) and not just simply removing the ferrite beads.
>
> Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Lee Ritchey
> Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 9:44 AM
> To: Dong Kim; steve weir; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: Istvan Novak; liuluping 41830
> Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: anlog and digital power plane isolation with
ferrite bead good idea?
>
> Dong,
> I have attached a PDS design program from Altera.  Notice that it does not
> include any ferrite beads.  same kind of thing is available from Xilinx.
>
> Yes, old applications notes from both Altera an Xilinx said to use ferrite
> beads.  This was never good advice and has finally been taken from their
app
> notes, but not before may engineers got conned into using ferrite beads.
>
> Lee
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Dong Kim" <kimdongsik_us@xxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 4:03 PM
> To: "Lee Ritchey" <leeritchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "steve weir"
> <weirsi@xxxxxxxxxx>; <si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: "Istvan Novak" <istvan.novak@xxxxxxx>; "liuluping 41830"
> <liuluping@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [SI-LIST] anlog and digital power plane isolation with ferrite
bead
> good idea?
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> My colleague, a PDN engineer, insist he has to use ferrite bead to
isolate
>> an analog power plane from digital plane for an large FPGA I am using on
a
>> PCB design.
>> I have been trying to convince him it would be better to have good
>> decoupling filter by adding inner-plane capacitance and decoupling caps.
>>
>> But, he is insisting I should prove it either by theory or simulation
>> before he can change his mind to remove the isolation ferrite bid and add
>> planer cap in my board stack-up.  I could not really prove by methodical
>> thory nor have time and tool to simulate.
>>
>> With my shallow  knowledge, it will just end with arguing even if he
agree
>> to do what I tell him to do.
>> My knowledge is  from my past board design with similar characteristics,
I
>> did not use the ferrite to isolate the analog and digital power planes.
>> It worked fine.
>> I also has shown him Lee Ritch's 2nd volume of "Right the first time".
>> But, I guess it did not convince him.
>>
>> Please someone explain why analog and digital power isolation by using
may
>> be not a good idea.
>>
>> Please help.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Dong S. Kim
>>
>>
>>
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--
Steve Weir
IPBLOX, LLC
150 N. Center St. #211
Reno, NV  89501
www.ipblox.com

(775) 299-4236 Business
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