Unintended passive resonant structures in interconnect designs for multi-gigabit signaling

Abstract

In a computer system design, printed-circuit board (PCB) and package designers may unknowingly ignore critical high-Q resonate phenomena. This is often associated with structures that are not direct part of the intended signaling path and/or not actively included in a typical signal integrity analysis. An example of the detrimental resonance impact due to an improperly terminated “no-connect” pin reveals a new class of problems associated with multi-gigabit signaling.