Re: [SI-LIST] : An Interesting Presentation

Dr. John L. Prince, III ([email protected])
Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:21:47 -0700 (MST)

>Dear Chuck,
>Thanks for you gracious remarks, which accurately
>reflect the spirit of my presentation.
>
>I should like to point out that in many applications,
>the risetime and clock period are fairly closely related.
>That is, if you look the range of bus architectures that have
>survived the "natural market selection process", you find that
>they typically specify a driver risetime that falls within
>a relatively narrow range.
>If the selected risetime is overly aggressive, the bus fails
>due to the high cost of terminating, shielding, and power
>supply filtering. Cheaper, lower-cost alternatives will
>prevail.
>If the selected risetime is too slow, the bus fails due to
>persistent difficulties managing the timing budget.
>Popular bus architectures seems to migrate towards a
>risetime on the order of five to twenty percent
>of the clock period.
>
>For these reasons, I think it is reasonable when
>contemplating the study of bus designs across mutiple
>orders-of-magnitude of performance to assume that the risetime
>and period are closely enough related that one may look at
>either period or risetime alone, and deduce from that
>simple measure some useful insights.
>
>Best regards,
>Dr. Howard Johnson
>
>At 02:24 PM 4/19/99 -0700, Chuck Hill wrote:
>>Abe,
>>
>>I think your and Howard's point of view are both correct. We SI people see
>>risetime as a more relevant parameter than clock period. But the digital
>>designers that we work with can understand the bus delay and clock period
>>more clearly since the risetime is of only secondary concern to them (if it
>>is a concern at all). The value of Howard's "bus timing ratio" is
>>communicating a general level of difficulty of SI to digital designers in
>>their own terms. It is "a key indicator", but not the only key indicator.
>>
>>
>>Charles Hill, consultant
>>Alta Engineering
>>[email protected]
>>
>>
>>At 09:53 AM 4/17/99 -0700, Abe Riazi wrote:
>>>Dear All,
>>>
>>> Recently, I reviewed an interesting paper by Dr. Howard Johnson, which
>>>had been presented at DesignCon99. It is a PDF file (busarch.pdf)
>>>entitled: "Bus Architecture & Timing", available at the High Speed
>>>Design Web Site: http://www.signcon.com/
>>>
>>> The paper evaluates design difficulty of several different buses in
>>>terms of bus timing ratio defined by [( bus delay ) / (clock period)].
>>>The results are summarized below:
>>>
>>> Bus: PC-AT, Bus timing ratio: 0.008,
>>>Mode: Slow , Design: Easy;
>>>
>>>
>>> Bus: PCI, Bus timing ratio: 0.062,
>>> Mode: Skew, Design: -------;
>>> Bus: RAMbus, Bus timing ratio: 2.5,
>>>Mode: Distributed clock, Design: -------;
>>>
>>> Bus: Ethernet 10BASE-5, Bus timing ratio: 100, Mode:
>>>Time-space, Design: More difficult;
>>>
>>> In the final slide it is stated: " The ratio (bus delay)/(clock
>>>period) is a key indicator of bus design difficulty".
>>>
>>> Admittedly, I was surprised by the conclusion and method of analysis
>>>employed by this article. Here, a parameter dependent on the PERIOD is
>>>used to evaluate difficulty of bus design. It seems to me that
>>>"Critical Length" is preferable for appraisal of design (or simulation)
>>>complexity of a high speed bus architecture. The Critical Length Lc
>>>varies with the RISE TIME (i.e. Lc = k * Tr / D , where Tr is the Rise
>>>Time ), rather than with the period or frequency.
>>>
>>> Your comments are appreciated.
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>>
>>> Abe Riazi
>>> Anigma, Inc.
>>>
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>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>_________________________________________________
>Dr. Howard Johnson, Signal Consulting, Inc.
>tel 425.556.0800 fax 425.881.6149 email [email protected]
>
>Upcoming High-Speed Digital Design seminars:
>S E E - - - >>> WWW.sigcon.com
>
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Your reasoning is interesting to me. For years I have taught that risetime
for a well designed system would be around 10% of the clock period. Very
much slower and you have practically a sine wave for a clock waveform; very
much faster is usually not necessary and may cause any of a multitude of
problems. I am also aware that any time one makes a generalization there
will immediately surface numerous exceptions, etc etc. Using this
"principle" many phenomena (eg,SSO noise ), can be related in some way to
clock frequency, which is conceptually often useful in today's digital
environment.

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