Contents I. Introduction
As technology trend of personal computers and electronics move towards fast speed, light-weight, and thin profiles, overall system signal quality becomes very important. High speed I/Os such as DDR (Double-Data-Rate) and GDDR (Graphic-Double-Data-Rate) take important roles in overall performance of personal computers. As switching speed becomes faster and faster, in which DDR4-2400 has the operating frequency of 1200MHz and GDDR5-8000 has the operating frequency of 4000MHz, the power noise caused by voltage switching modules become a critical issue. Not only would this cause signal quality deterioration, it would also cause severe system failures. The rapid charging and discharging of currents is the root cause of the power switching noise. It would travel from the chip to the board through the PDN [1]. The PDN is generalized by the power and ground planes in board designs. The switching noise would then couple, by means of capacitive coupling and inductive coupling, to the signal trace in three different ways [1]–[2].
Coupling between horizontal and horizontal structures between signal layer and power plane layer shown in Fig. 1.
Coupling between horizontal and vertical structures between power plane and signal transition vias which are drilled through the power plane shown in Fig. 2.
Coupling between vertical and vertical structures between signal transition vias and power vias placed nearby shown in Fig. 3.
