Controlled Inter-Symbol Interference Design Techniques of Conventional Interconnect Systems for Data Rates Beyond 20 Gbps

The paper presents a new design technique of high-speed interconnects with controlled inter-symbol interference (ISI) to create efficient signaling over a band-limited channel. The conductor loss, dielectric dispersion, and reflections in the board, package, and connector significantly limit the channel bandwidth. In order to mitigate the resulting ISI, special transmitters with signal conditioning and coding capabilities were used in the past (Sinky et al, 2005). In this new approach, the non-idealities in the passive interconnect systems are used to shape the response of the channel into a set of channel characteristics with some controlled ISI. The controlled ISI is exploited at the receiver to achieve high data rates. The techniques to design interconnects with controlled ISI are reasonably simple to implement in conventional interconnect technologies. Simulation examples are given to demonstrate the validity and advantages of the technique