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For high-speed digital communication busses, what attributes do you generally advise to add to a PCB to help with validating the communication bus as well as troubleshooting the design? In particu...
#1: Initial revision
High Speed Digital Communication Bus Probing
For high-speed digital communication busses, what attributes do you generally advise to add to a PCB to help with validating the communication bus as well as troubleshooting the design? In particular, I'm interested in adding features to a PCB with a parallel bus for SDR SDRAM with a clock of 167MHz, and a quad SPI bus for Flash memory with a clock of 133MHz. The rise/fall times are roughly 1ns. I suspect I will need to use an active probe to monitor a given signal with an oscilloscope. Is it realistic to probe multiple lines of a parallel bus to validate relative timing and signal integrity of the signals? Are there any features on a PCB that are helpful for holding the probes, without adding significant inductance, so that you can use your hands for interfacing with the test equipment. Other than an oscilloscope, what other instruments are useful for probing high speed digital busses?