MAX® 10 FPGA Design Guidelines

ID 683196
Date 5/15/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.6.2.3. Determine if your system requires differential signaling

  • Differential signaling eliminates the interface performance barrier of single-ended and voltage-referenced signaling, with superior speed using an additional inverted closely-coupled data pair.
  • Differential signaling avoids the requirement for a clean reference voltage. This is possible because of lower swing voltage and noise immunity with a common mode noise rejection capability.
  • Considerations for this implementation include the requirements for a dedicated PLL to generate a sampling clock, and matched trace lengths to eliminate the phase difference between an inverted and non-inverted pair.
  • Allow the software to assign locations for the negative pin in differential pin pairs. You only need to assign the positive pins.