Stefaan Sercu, Signal Integrity R&D Manager, Electronics, FCI
Vittal Balasubramanian, Senior Signal Integrity Engineer, FCI
Nathan Altland, Senior Signal Integrity Engineer, FCI
Jan deGeest, Senior Signal Integrity R&D Engineer, FCI
Stephen B. Smith, Staff Signal Integrity Engineer, FCI

Many standardization committees such as SAS, SFF, OIF, IEEE, IBTA, etc. have defined or are in the process of defining informative and/or normative specifications for passive channels operating at multiple gigabit speeds. This paper provides an overview of the different channel performance parameters and compliance testing methods that are applied today in the industry, and analyzes how the different methods correlate with each other in both the presence and absence of signal conditioning. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of many of the different parameters (IL, RL, ILD, ICR, ICN, WDP, etc.) and methods prescribed by the standardization committees.