Chad Morgan, Principal Engineer, Circuits and Design, Tyco Electronics

To address the ever-increasing need to widen network bandwidth, SI engineers continue to push backplane link speeds toward 25 Gbps. When designing links, SI engineers often begin with a specific connector platform and then modify system variables such as trace length, dielectric materials, and equalization settings to achieve acceptable performance. This paper takes a different approach by setting various system and equalizer parameters to slightly aggressive values and then studying the effect of various connector performance levels. The result of the paper is a set of connector performance rules necessary for successful 25 Gbps backplane operation.