Signal Integrity Considerations for High Speed Digital Hardware Design

As system clock frequencies and rise times increase, signal integrity design considerations are becoming ever more important. Unfortunately many Digital Designers may not recognize the importance of signal integrity issues and problems may not be identified until it is too late.

This paper presents the most common design issues affecting signal integrity in high-speed digital hardware design. These include impedance control, terminations, ground/power planes, signal routing and crosstalk. Armed with the knowledge presented here, a digital designer will be able to recognize potential signal integrity problems at the earliest design stage. Also, the designer will be able to apply techniques presented in this paper to prevent these issues affecting the performance of their design.