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Figure 1: These images depict the degradation of serial data
traffic as it makes its way from transmitter to receiver |
In recent years, the data rates in serial links have increased exponentially across any number of standard protocols, including PCI Express, USB, and even SATA and SAS. With higher data rates comes more challenges for system designers, validation engineers, and test engineers with respect to signal integrity (SI). Some SI effects are much more prominent at higher data rates than they were for lower-speed versions of the same protocols. In this series of posts, we'll examine these SI effects, look at some methods of improving system performance, and discuss some SI analysis solutions as well as measurement considerations.
