Comprehensive signal and power co-investigation on DDR4 simulation and measurement

As the technology continues to scale down and the data rate is increasing dramatically, PCB design has become more challenging than ever. Keeping track of signal and power integrity becomes a requirement for PCB designers in order to meet the product development time and reduce the overall cost. Memory is always the first component to check in a system, thus it is important to make full use of circuit and EM simulators to solve all its potential problems at the initial design stage instead of late troubleshooting. In this manner, the investigation on the DDR is studied to determine its prospective issues by SI/PI simulation. Not only the frequency domain simulation is performed to check its power integrity impedance, but the transient simulation is also applied to analyze how power integrity issue may lead to a potential signal quality failure. Simulation and measurement results are performed for verification.