Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1539283
32 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2025 Your test fixtures provide accurate results at extremely high speeds, and you don't seem to have much competition at those speeds. Why is it so difficult to test at those speeds, when things get squirrely? The signal integrity of the test fixtures needs to be virtually perfect, which also includes fabrication issues like trans- mission line imped- ance. We have pro- prietary "sauce" to improve impedance to within 2%. We outlined some of these ideas in our latest DesignCon paper, "Free Signal Integrity? How Understanding Anisotropic Materials and Tolerances Could Increase Perfor- mance at 112/224Gbps and Beyond," co-authored with Cadence Design Systems and Dr. Eric Boga- tin. Other key issues are RF launch integrity, skew, and minimization of stray resonances due to non- optimal stackup designs. I know you've won a few "Best Paper" awards at DesignCon. They were all brilliantly written. I have also written my share of B-grade papers as well. Publish or perish. What advice would you give design engineers who find themselves working at the upper end of the high-speed realm? Hire WRT to do your high-speed design. But seri- ously, do your homework, and learn all you can about signal integrity. Then, when you're ready, use your EDA tool as a tool, not a crutch. Also, acquire a mastery of measurements in both the frequency and time domain. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Are you still playing guitar? Right now, my team is the SEAL Team Six of signal integrity and high-speed design. They seamlessly work with routing and layout challenges, teaming up with PCB designers to deliver optimized sys- tems. Sometimes they must reduce the structure footprint to allow for routing density. The "art" of signal integrity engineering is reduc- ing structures without adversely impacting SI per- formance. True signal integrity engineering also involves dealing with channels, assessing margin, and devising strategies to gain margin. You can simulate for months, but in the end, it takes a very good SI engineer to get the margin game down for these challenged serial link systems. I am starting to play music again. Thanks for asking. Thanks for your input, SEAL Team Leader. I'm sure I'll see you at DesignCon. Always a pleasure, Andy. DESIGN007 A l Neves