DDR Interface Design

HyperLynx Signal Integrity provides powerful analysis of DDR-based designs to greatly reduce design and debug cycles. HyperLynx accounts for board level effects such as ISI and crosstalk to characterize signal quality parameters such as setup/hold times, over/undershoot, monotonicity, etc. to validate against JEDEC standards or custom requirements.

HyperLynx enables creation and validation of designs incorporating the high speed parallel DDRx channel standards, the dominant parallel bus architecture for memory in most segments of the electronics industry. Its DDRx Wizard solves a major challenge in the validation of this bus by automating the analysis of the vast number of parallel lines for nuanced signal integrity requirements.

• Supports all popular DDRx design standards from LPDDR based designs found in consumer mobile devices (including LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X) to DDR4 devices found in mainstream computing.
• Can perform pre-layout analysis to determine the best topology, or perform post-layout analysis to validate a given single or multi-board system
• Easily imports data from major CAD board layout sources, including Allegro

The validation of a DDRx bus involves the analysis of several timing and voltage measurements. Manual analysis of an entire DDR bus is impractical and can require more time than is typically available. HyperLynx greatly reduces the setup time required to get a simulation going, while at the same time not sacrificing any of the detailed analysis required to get results, which help make decisions in the design.

• Automatically incorporates JEDEC requirements for validation, including waveform-shape dependent derating
• Allows for customizing validation parameters, often needed at controllers
• Conduct sweeps to try out "what-if" scenarios
• Incorporate read and write leveling/calibration capabilities of the controller

Wide, high-speed, single-ended buses are especially prone to interactions between the systems power delivery network (PDN) and high-speed signals. These interactions degrade system design margin and are notoriously difficult to debug in the lab. HyperLynx Power-Aware analysis lets designers model and simulate the effects to detect and resolve issues before the first board is fabricated.

• Integrated hybrid electromagnetic solver automatically creates accurate models for DDR signals
• Models effects of simultaneous switching noise (SSN) on signal behavior
• Models effects of non-ideal return paths (including return path sharing) on signal behavior