Validating high-speed serdes transmission lines on prototype circuit boards will certainly give you a level of confidence in the design. The problem is that this confidence can quickly erode during volume manufacturing because of the variances inherent in manufacturing processes. If undetected, these variances can increase warranty returns and repair costs downstream. We’ve just written a new e-book that explores this problem and describes solutions.
I collaborated with Arden Bjerkeli, ASSET’s director of customer experience, on an e-book entitled “How to avoid poor serdes performance caused by circuit board manufacturing variances”. The problem can become acute because undetected variances lead to a host of defects, such as pin holes, breakouts, under-etching, over-etching, opens, shorts, spurious copper, spurs, traces too close together, incompletely plated vias, annular ring breakout, variances in plating thickness, delamination and many more.
Unfortunately, the validation techniques that design engineers use on prototypes usually involve oscilloscopes or vector network analyzers. And these types of external testers don’t deploy well in high-volume manufacturing settings where test time is critical. Embedded instrumentation offers an effective alternative because margining and bit error rate tests can be performed on samples of production boards without slowing the manufacturing line significantly.
Check out this informative e-book, "How to avoid poor serdes performance caused by circuit board manufacturing variances".
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