Re: [SI-LIST] : An Interesting Presentation

Howard Johnson ([email protected])
Tue, 20 Apr 1999 21:51:17 -0700

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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_________________________________________________
Dr. Howard Johnson, Signal Consulting, Inc.
tel 425.556.0800 fax 425.881.6149 email [email protected]

Upcoming High-Speed Digital Design seminars:
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