Shielded differential connector delivers increased bandwidth and signal integrity performance

As system designers look to further increase performance by running backplane buses at frequencies /spl ges/500 MHz, more advanced interconnect designs are necessary to meet bandwidth-density and signal integrity requirements. Overall backplane system bandwidth performance is dependent on close matching of the interconnect and backplane PCB performance. Adding stripline ground structures and external shielding in conventional "pin-n-socket" backplane interconnects has managed to improve signal integrity and bandwidth performance to some extent. However, use of advanced serial bus logic circuitry along with differential signaling and trace routing is creating board system designs with bandwidth performance at and beyond 2.5 Gbits/s, requiring further improvements in backplane interconnects. Metral HB/sup TM/, a new backplane connector design optimized for differential signal routing, providing increased bandwidth performance greater than 6 GHz, and containing advanced twin-axial shielding structures that reduce multiline crosstalk to less than 2% @ 100 psec, will be discussed.