What's New in High-Speed Digital Design and Simulation?

Electronic design is the process of creating, testing, and optimizing electronic circuits and systems. It can involve analog, digital, or mixed-signal components and technologies and applies to various domains, such as communications, data centers, and semiconductors.

EDA software is a computer-aided design category of tools for electronic circuits and systems. EDA software tools simulate the behavior and performance of electronic circuits and systems under various conditions and scenarios before fabrication or implementation. They perform different types of simulation, such as logic, functional, timing, electrical, thermal, and electromagnetic, helping designers reduce the risk of design errors, improve the quality of the final product, and save time and money in the development process.

High-speed digital design is a subset of electronic design that deals with the physical layer of digital circuits and communication systems operating at high data rates. It requires special attention to the effects of signal integrity, power integrity, electromagnetic interference, and thermal management. High-speed digital design can enable faster data transfer, lower power consumption, and higher performance in electronic systems.

Standards-driven design is an electronic design method that follows predefined specifications and protocols for communication, data exchange, and interoperability between different devices and systems. Standards-based design can facilitate compatibility, reliability, and scalability in electronic systems. Examples of standards-based design include USB, PCIe®, UCIe, and DDR.

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a standard for communication and power delivery between devices and hosts, such as computers, smartphones, cameras, and peripherals. USB supports various data rates, from 1.5 Mbps (USB 1.0) to 80 Gbps (USB4 Version 2.0). USB also supports different power delivery modes, from 2.5 W (USB 2.0) to 240 W (USB PD 3.1). USB4 Version 2.0 is the latest version of the standard and is backward compatible with USB 3.2, USB 2.0, and Thunderbolt 3.

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) is a standard for high-speed serial communication between devices and hosts, such as computers, graphics cards, network cards, and storage devices. PCIe supports various data rates, from 2.5 GT/s (PCIe 1.0) to 64 GT/s (PCIe 6.0). The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG®) defines specifications and compliance tests that guarantee the interoperability of PCIe systems. PCIe also supports different lane configurations, from x1 to x32, to increase bandwidth and performance.

Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) is a standard for high-speed serial communication between chiplets. Designers can combine these small integrated circuits to form larger, more complex chips. UCIe is based on CXL / PCIe and supports the same data rates and lane configurations. UCIe enables chiplet-based designs that reduce cost, power consumption, and design complexity while increasing performance and scalability.

A chiplet is a small, modular chip that performs a specific function very well. For example, a chiplet can be a processor core, a memory block, an I/O driver, or a signal processing unit. Chiplets are designed to be used in a chiplet-based architecture, in which multiple chiplets are connected through a standardized high-speed digital interface, such as UCIe, to form a complete system-on-chip (SoC).

Double Data Rate (DDR) Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory (SDRAM) is a standard for high-speed memory communication between devices and hosts, such as computers, memory modules, and graphics cards. DDR supports various data rates, from 200 Mbps (DDR) to 6400 Mbps (DDR5). DDR also supports different memory capacities, from 64 MB (DDR) to 64 GB (DDR5). DDR transfers data on the clock signal's rising and falling edges, doubling the effective bandwidth.