This thorough review of the fundamental principles associated with signal integrity provides engineering principles behind signal integrity effects, and applies this understanding to solving problems.

PrefacePrinted circuit-board and IC-package design used to be a field that involved expertise in layout, CAD, logic design, heat transfer, mechanical engineering, and reliability analysis. With modern digital electronic systems pushing beyond the 1-GHz barrier, packaging and board designers must now balance signal integrity and electrical performance with these other concerns.Everyone who touches the physical design of a product has the potential of affecting the performance. All designers should understand how what they do will affect signal integrity or, at the very least, be able to talk with engineers who are responsible for the signal integrity.The old design methodology of building prototypes, hoping they work, and then testing them to find out is no longer cost effective when time to market is as important as cost and performance. If signal integrity is not taken into account from the beginning, there is little hope a design will work the first time.In our new "high-speed" world, where the packaging and interconnect are no longer electrically transparent to the signals, a new methodology for designing a product right the first time is needed. This new methodology is based on predictability. The first step is to use established design guidelines based on engineering discipline. The second step is to evaluate the expected performance by "putting in the numbers." This is what distinguishes engineering from guesswork. It takes advantage of four important tools: rules of thumb, analytic approximations, numerical simulation tools, and measurements. With an efficient design and simulation process, many of the trade-offs between the expected performance and the ultimate cost can be evaluated early in the design cycle, where the time, risk, and cost savings will have the biggest impact. The way to solve signal integrity problems is to first understand their origin and then apply all the tools in our toolbox to find and verify the optimum solution.The design process is an intuitive one. The source of inspiration for a new way of solving a problem is that mysterious world of imagination and creativity. An idea is generated and the analytical powers of our technical training take over to massage the idea into a practical solution. Though computer simulations are absolutely necessary for final verification of a solution, they only rarely aid in our intuitive understanding. Rather, it is an understanding of the mechanisms, principles and definitions, and exposure to the possibilities, that contribute to the creation of a solution. Arriving at that initial guess and knowing the places to look for solutions require understanding and imagination.This book emphasizes the intuitive approach. It offers a framework for understanding the electrical properties of interconnects and materials that apply across the entire hierarchy from on-chip, through the packages, circuit boards, connectors, and cables.Those struggling with the confusing and sometimes contradictory statements made in the trade press will use this book as their starting place. Those experienced in electrical design will use this book as the place to finally understand what the equations mean.In this book, terms are introduced starting at the ground floor. For example, the impedance of a transmission line is the most fundamental electrical property of an interconnect. It describes what a signal will see electrically and how it will interact with the interconnects. For those new to signal integrity, most of the problems arise from confusion over three terms: the characteristic impedance, the impedance, and the instantaneous impedance a signal sees. This distinction is even important for experienced engineers. This book introduces the reader to each of these terms and their meanings, without complex mathematics.New topics are introduced at a basic level; most are not covered in other signal integrity books