Serial link engineering: A novel jitter/noise metric to qualify channel components

System interconnects are increasingly dominated by serial links. Understanding the contribution of different system components to jitter and noise, and subsequently tuning those components, is the key to a successful design. In this paper we´re proposing a novel eye-area based normalized jitter and noise metric. We show how this metric can consistently be used for different data rates, to offer insight into various components and to identify the ones that are limiting the design. The study also reveals how seemingly small structures and device parasitics can non-linearly increase their jitter and noise contribution to the overall system.