Revision 1.0 - February 25, 2000
APPLICATION NOTE
S2202 Application Note and Reference
Diagrams
When laying out a high-speed part, the high-speed I/O should be considered first. The differential receive pairs are
Ω
shown with 100 line-to-line termination resistors. The resistors should be placed as close to the receive inputs as
possible while adhering to layout rules. The differential transmit pairs are shown with pull-down resistors. If pull-
down resistors are included they should be placed as close as possible to the transmit outputs while adhering to
layout rules. AC coupling capacitors are not shown in this layout. They are typically included in the high-speed sig-
nal path in order to insure that the DC bias of the high-speed PECL outputs does not affect the inputs. There is no
requirement to place the coupling capacitors close to either the transmitting or receiving part. If a signal is routed
through a connector, the AC coupling capacitors are often laid out close to the connector. If AC coupling capacitors
are employed, they may be included with the outputs, the inputs, or both places1. When two parts from the AMCC
SiliconHiway™ family are connected, coupling capacitors are not required to reconcile DC levels. However, there
are several design considerations that may make it desirable to include them. In applications where a board may
be hot swapped, it is likely that the high speed I/O will be excited before the chip has been powered up. Adding
coupling capacitors insures that the signal on any input (or output) will not be more than approximately one volt.
At gigabit rates, the high-speed traces exhibit transmission line effects. It is important to keep the trace lengths of
differential pairs the same length in order to minimize skew, and to use either chamfered or rounded corners in
order to reduce ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI) and impedance mismatches. In Figure 6, the high-speed lines
are microstrip traces (placed on the surface of the board above a power or ground plane). These can also be laid
out as stripline traces (sandwiched between power/ground planes on an internal signal plane) by including vias
close to the termination/pull-down resistors. Stripline traces have the advantage of better EMI shielding, but the
vias cause small impedance mismatches that will result in small reflections in the signal lines.
Following the high-speed I/O traces, the reference clock input, loop filter, and analog power decoupling are the
most important layout features. Each of these is critical because they could potentially offer a path for noise into the
analog portion of the chip, which translates into jitter. The clock line should be kept as short as possible, and care
should be taken to minimize the potential for crosstalk or noise coupling onto the clock line. The loop filter is shown
Ω
in the upper left corner of Figure 6. Two 270 resistors are connected to the external loop filter pins, with an AC
coupling capacitor (22 nF) between them. The entire loop filter is surrounded by a ground ring to increase noise
immunity. The analog power pins are connected to a power planelet, which should be created on one of the signal
planes. The planelet is isolated from the power plane by a ferrite (see Table 1). Close to the ferrite, the power plane
µ
is decoupled to ground by a large capacitor (10 F). In addition, decoupling capacitors are added close to each
analog power pin.
Finally, decoupling capacitors are added around the chip as space allows. Due to the ball density of BGA pack-
ages, it is not reasonable to attempt to decouple every power pin. Where space permits, power pins are directly
µ
decoupled. In addition, capacitors are sprinkled around the chip, the most notable of which is the 10 F capacitor in
the center of the chip. Note that multiple vias are employed to both the power and ground planes to reduce the
impedance between the capacitor pads and the respective planes.
1
Applications where hot swapping of boards is required often employ AC coupling capacitors at both the input and the output to insure that DC
levels do not harm the chip prior to power on.
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