High-Speed PCB Design
Considerations
February 2004
Technical Note TN1033
1
tn1033_03© 2004 Lattice Semiconductor Corp. All Lattice trademarks, registered trademarks, patents, and disclaimers are as listed at /legal. All otherbrand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. The specifications and information herein are subject to change withoutnotice.IntroductionThe backplane is the physical interconnection where typically all electrical modules of a system converge. Complexsystems rely on the wires, traces, and connectors of the backplane to handle large amounts of data at high speeds.The communications between the various backplane modules depends on the inherent electrical characteristicssuch as impedance, capacitance, and inductance derived from connectors, trace lengths, vias, and termination, toname a few. An extremely important factor for a distributed-load, high performance backplane is a basic under-standing of the design practices used to ensure good signal integrity. This technical note examines some basic differences in interconnection topologies. It describes the various issuesthat should be considered while designing a backplane and focuses on the critical aspects of point-to-point trans-mission lines that are run through a backplane. These aspects include PCB line structure, vias, device packagingand backplane connectors. A PCB design checklist is provided to aid the designer. Some frequency specific dis-cussion and guidelines are given. This document also discusses Lattice Semiconductor's FPSC product line andit's high-speed backplane interfaces. These provide serial streams up to 3.7 Gbps through CML differential buffers.Backplane Topology and OverviewThree different system interconnection topologies are normally used in backplanes today. These are multi-point,multi-drop and point-to-point. Traditionally systems have used multi-point/ multi-drop connection topologies, whichprovided efficient interconnection and communication between multiple devices, with a single net (node), as shownin Figure 1.Figure 1. Multi-Point Backplane Illustration