On Feb 5, 2:26*pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 4, 4:04*am, TSMGrizzly <sbatt...@yahoo.co.jp> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for the input so far, guys!
>
> > I will have two SRAM chips and one parallel EEPROM in one memory
> > space, and one additional RAM chip in a separate memory space so I
> > know for sure that that one gets its own dedicated address/control/
> > data lines.
> > I was just wondering if the signal integrity would be hurt by extra
> > loading in chaining up the ones that are on the same bus, but I had a
> > hunch that at these speeds it wouldn't be such a big problem.
>
> Signal integrity is not normally a direct result of the "loading" of
> the parts. *On most boards the effect of a pin on a bus is minimal.
> If you split a run, like a fork in a river, it results in an impedance
> mismatch and causes a reflection. *The end of a trace is a high
> impedance which also is an impedance mismatch and causes a
> reflection. *Three chips can be added to the board with trances as
> short as maybe 2 inches. *This is 4 inches round trip or about half a
> ns. *To avoid effects of reflection, the edge transition time should
> be at least 3 ns. *That is a *slow* edge. *So expect noticeable
> ringing. *As has been said, on the data and address lines, you just
> need to extend the setup times to wait it out to sample the bus when
> it has quieted down. *Figure three round trips or 1.5 ns extra. *But
> the write enable signal should be clean. *The best way I know to do
> that is to provide a separate write enable driver for each chip. *Then
> you can use series impedance matching in a point to point wiring so
> that the receiver does not see any effects from reflection. *Of course
> this is assuming the write enable is the controlling pin when doing
> writes. *Some designs use the chip select to control the write
> timing.
>
> > And probably I will be using 10ns RAMs (I haven't looked at the rise/
> > fall times though) and keeping them physically as close as I can get
> > them to the FPGA.. maybe about a centimeter away, tops.
> > Looking at this old Digilent Spartan 3 board I have kicking around, I
> > don't see any termination between the FPGA and the ISSI SRAMs on
> > there, but each chip has its own address and data lines.. I dunno if
> > that's good enough to use as an example or not though.
>
> Are you going to try to use them as fast as possible? *That can be
> hard. *If you can give each chip separate drivers for all signals, may
> be able to keep the traces short enough to not see any reflection
> effects. *I may have muffed the math on this. *That's the trouble with
> rules of thumb. *If you recall them incorrectly, it can be hard to
> spot the error. *Looking at this document,
>
> http://techcircuits.net/docs/CriticalLength.pdf
>
> It looks like I was overly pessimistic on the length. *The rule of
> thumb seems to be 1/3 instead of 1/6 so a 1 ns rise time won't cause
> significant reflections, but I'm not sure about that. *On page 7 they
> use an analysis that I don't agree with. *Basically, they are saying
> this is the critical edge of timing and I don't think it is that clear
> cut. *I say use 1/6, but you can choose your own poison.
>
> > As for the supply voltages, I'll be using a Virtex II, but this is the
> > first time I have started to think about implementing my own board and
> > thus needing to worry about power supplies, and I seemed to remember
> > some of my dev boards in the past having a couple or three different
> > regulators on board, but I didn't really think much about it. Looking
> > at the datasheet though, you're right, Rick, it appears that I just
> > need a single 1.5V supply for core voltage, and 3.3V for VCC_aux and
> > all of my I/O. I should have checked that and had the numbers right
> > before asking, sorry about that.
>
> I would pick a newer family myself, but there is nothing wrong with a
> Virtex II device. *However, a newer family will be faster, lower power
> and you will likely get better support. *Of course you can overdo that
> too. *If you try to use the newest family, you may not get parts for
> months and the tools may be a bit buggy... *But Virtex 2??? *Why not
> Virtex 5 or even Virtex 4? *The Spartan 3 chips are pretty good and
> have been updated quite a bit although *I don't recall which are the
> latest and greatest. *I know the S3 parts are FAPP not recommended for
> new designs (at least by those of us here I expect) and the S3A parts
> are pretty old at this point. *Anyone, what are the newer S3x parts?
>
> If you want to keep the power supply simple, Lattice has XP and
> perhaps XP2 parts that use a single 3.3 volt supply and internally
> drop it to the core voltage.
>
> > So if I need power planes for both of these voltages, do they each
> > need their own layer or can I arrange it carefully in one layer?
>
> Yes, you can use one layer. *I have a very tiny board <1" x 4.5" with
> no less than four power planes on one layer, +12, +5, +3.3 and an
> audio 3.3. *There is another 1.8 volt plane in case I want to use an
> FPGA with separate core voltage inputs, but that plane is on a
> different layer shared with signal traces. *I can't stress enough the
> importance of power planes in keeping switching noise down. *It is not
> just a matter of adding a high frequency capacitor to the power rail,
> it acts as a very low impedance transmission line connecting the
> capacitors to the power pins of the chip. *It is counter intuitive,
> but it actually is not so important to keep the caps so close to the
> chip if you are using good power planes. *BTW, to maximize the
> effectiveness of the power planes (read that as minimum impedance) you
> want to have the power and ground plane as close together as
> possible. *5 mils spacing should be practical and will go a long way
> to doing a good job.
>
> I found doing layout to be fun, but very intense! *Most design
> requires you to go back and forth between specs and data sheets and
> the schematic capture package. *Layout has some up front work getting
> all the inputs and making the footprints, but then it just becomes a
> really complex rubics cube with many possible solutions. *Your job is
> to find one that is pretty good without spending tons of time on it.
>
> When I did my first layout, I contacted a couple of colleges and asked
> them to do a design review with me. *I was willing to pay them
> consulting rates, but I was turned down. *It turned out ok in the end,
> but there were a couple of things that likely would have been caught
> in a review. *I am not very busy right now. *If you would like and
> when you are ready, I'd be willing to go through a design review with
> you without charge. *I'm pretty bored and would enjoy it.
>
> Rick

Rick, thanks for all the help, and I appreciate the offer! I might
take you up on it. If you send me an e-mail to the address displayed
here, I can reply with a more useful e-mail address.. I use a kind of
junk-ish secondary address to access google groups because of all the
spam. I'd like not to be on google groups but I don't have a news
server at the moment, and don't know where to go for one..
I have some other things to do (including programming and testing the
first iteration on an already made dev board) so it's going to be a
little while before my layout is ready to go.

I have some reasons why Virtex-II and not something newer, and why
SRAM and all that, and there is a little bit more to the overall
system than I've mentioned though.

As for remapping the EEPROM, I'm not too worried about that because I
was going to whip up a second FPGA configuration just to write the
contents of the EEPROM, so the addresses and bit orders will come out
the same. But yeah I'd rather keep all the address lines as they are.

I probably won't be pushing timing to the max.. the critical thing is
that I can write continuously to RAM on a ~25MHz clock (or maybe I can
afford to go with half that) for a certain period.

Steve