Modeling requirements for transmission lines in multi-gigabit systems

As computer clock speeds continue to increase at a rate dictated by Moore's Law, the system buses must also scale in proportion to the processor speed. As data rates approach 8 to 10 Gb/s, the traditional methods used to model transmission lines start to break down and become inadequate for the proper prediction of signal integrity. Specifically, the approximations made in traditional transmission line models, while perfectly adequate for slower speeds, violate conservation of energy principles and produce non-causal waveforms in the time domain responses. This work is discuss the problems associated with accurately predicting transient responses at multi-gigabit data rates and provide a simple and practical solution that accurately predicts transient responses for multi-gigabit channel design.