What’s New in Signal Integrity and High-Speed Serial Links: Approaching the Fundamental Limits of Copper Interconnects

In high-speed digital systems containing dense digital devices, such as microcontrollers, microprocessors, graphic processors, network processors, switching hubs, field-programmable gate arrays, and application-specific integrated circuits (ICs), the interconnects are no longer transparent. This has been the case for systems since clock frequencies rose above 50 MHz, which includes just about all digital products used today. Unless special care is taken in their design and implementation, a high-speed system will fail due to one or more problems generally grouped into the families of signal integrity (SI), power integrity (PI), or electromagnetic interference (EMI) [1].