Serial Link Designer

Analyze PCB designs for serial link applications

Since R2021b

Description

The Serial Link Designer app analyzes PCB designs for serial link applications for both pre-layout and post-layout simulations. To perform post-layout analysis, you need license to RF PCB Toolbox™.

Using pre-layout analysis, you can run simulations using IBIS-AMI models with models of your system channels to determine equalization gamut, plot IBIS Statistical and Time Domain eye diagrams at a specified BER, measure channel response characteristics vs. specification masks, as well as perform crosstalk analysis. The pre-layout analysis environment can help you to generate design guidelines for board layouts, package layouts, connectors, and cabling. The post-layout environment verifies the actual layout against design guidelines or specification rules provided in a signal integrity kit.

Note

Signal Integrity Toolbox™ recommends you to set the Java Heap Memory to at least 8192 MB when using the Serial Link Designer app.

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Open the Serial Link Designer App

• MATLAB^® Toolstrip: In the Apps tab, under Signal Processing and Communications, click the app icon.

• MATLAB command prompt: Enter serialLinkDesigner.

Examples

• Analyze Serial Links with Serial Link Designer
• Analyze Backplane with Line Cards
• Edit Imported S-Parameter Data

Programmatic Use

serialLinkDesigner

serialLinkDesigner opens a new session of the Serial Link Designer app, enabling you to design and analyze a serial link PCB.

serialLinkDesigner('file.qcd')

serialLinkDesigner('file.qcd') opens the interface designated by file.qcd.

serialLinkDesigner('file.script')

serialLinkDesigner('file.script') runs a script file and returns the app process handle.

More About

Simulation Parameters

Simulation Parameters control how the analysis is run in the Serial Link Designer app. For more information, see Simulation Parameters Used in Serial Link Design.

Corner Conditions

There are two types of corner conditions you can vary using the Serial Link Designer app.

• IC Environment Corners — These are the temperature and voltage factor parameters that can be set for each IC corner and used in simulation. The temperature parameter has no affect on IBIS buffer models because those are pre-generated by the vendor and are already included in the model.

• Etch Corners — These are the scaling factors for the characteristic impedance (Z₀) and propagation delay (T_pd) parameters of transmission line models. Both ideal and lossy transmission line models are scaled. Lossy transmission line models are scaled by computing the values of Z₀ and T_pd from the typical corner L and C values.

For more information, see Specify Corner Conditions in Serial Link Design.

Stimulus Patterns

You can specify the stimulus patterns used by the simulator for time domain analysis. If the specified pattern for a designator has fewer bits than the simulation length, the pattern is repeated from the first bit of the pattern. If the pattern is longer than the simulation length, the simulation will end at the time specified by Time Domain Stop. For more information, see Stimulus Patterns in Serial Link Design.

Tips

• Signal Integrity Toolbox recommends you to set the Java Heap Memory to at least 8192MB. To access the setting, go to Home > Preferences > MATLAB > General > Java Heap Memory.

Version History

Introduced in R2021b