Agilex™ 7 Device Family High-Speed Serial Interface Signal Integrity Design Guidelines

ID 683864
Date 11/20/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.4.3.4. Simulating the Active Channel

Passive channel simulation checks most board designs. However, Altera suggests performing active channel simulation (eye diagram simulation with IBIS-AMI model) to further capture the channel behavior with TX and RX devices.
  1. Contact Altera for the F-tile IBIS-AMI model and user guide.
  2. Cascade the IBIS-AMI model with the optimized passive channel model in channel simulation tools.
  3. Tune the TX PMA parameter (auto adaption for RX).
  4. Run channel simulations to get the optimized eye diagram.
    Typically, any non-zero open eye means the channel can work, but you should optimize the TX PMA setting for the best eye opening at the target BER level, to get the best design margin.