Backplane Designer's Guide: Architecture

The primary criteria for backplane design are low cost, high speed, and high reliability. To attain these often-conflicting goals, it is necessary to maximize the performance of every aspect of the design, including the backplane configuration. A prime consideration is how data is transmitted between the driver and receiver(s), and data transmission depends of on three backplane characteristics: the distance or space between the sending and receiving devices, the speed at which data must be sent to a receiving device, and the capacitive loading the signal will see traveling between the driver and receiver(s).