AN 763: Intel® Arria® 10 SoC Device Design Guidelines

ID 683192
Date 5/17/2022
Public
Document Table of Contents

4.5.2. USB Interface Design Guidelines

The Intel® Arria® 10 HPS can connect its embedded USB MACs directly to industry-standard USB 2.0 ULPI PHYs using the shared I/O pins in the HPS 3V I/O bank that support 1.8V, 2.5V and 3.0V I/O standards. No FPGA routing resources are used and timing is fixed, which simplifies design.

This guide describes the design guidelines covering all supported speeds of PHY operation: High-Speed (HS) 480 Mbps, Full-Speed (FS) 12 Mbps, and Low-Speed (LS) 1.5 Mbps.

GUIDELINE: It is recommended that you design the board to support both USB PHY modes where the device supplies the clock versus where an external clock is the source.

The interface between the ULPI MAC and PHY on the Arria 10 SoC consists of DATA[7:0], DIR and NXT from the MAC to the PHY and STP from the MAC to the PHY. Lastly a static clock of 60MHz is driven from the PHY or from an external oscillator and is required for operation, including some register accesses from the HPS to the USB MAC. Ensure the PHY manufacturer recommendations for RESET and power-up are followed.

If your USB PHY supports both input and output clock modes, Intel® recommends that you design your board to support both modes to mitigate potential timing issues. Typically, these modes are selected through passive bootstrap pins that are either pulled high or low.

GUIDELINE: Ensure that the USB signal trace lengths are minimized.

At 60 MHz, the period is 16.67 ns and in that time, for example, the clock must travel from the external PHY to the MAC and then the data and control signals must travel from the MAC to the PHY. Because there is a round-trip delay, the maximum length of the CLK and ULPI signals are important. Based on preliminary timing data the maximum length is recommended to be less than 7 inches. This is based on a PHY with a 5 ns Tco spec. If the specification is slower the total length must be shortened accordingly.

If there is little setup timing margin on the USB PHY end of the bus, sometimes you can switch the PHY to input clock mode and supply a 60 MHz clock source from the board.

GUIDELINE: Ensure that signal integrity is considered.

Signal integrity is important mostly on the CLK signal driven from the PHY to the MAC in the HPS. Because these signals are point-to-point with a maximum length, they can usually run unterminated but Intel® recommends to simulate the traces to make sure the reflections are minimized. Using the 50-ohm output setting from the FPGA is typically recommended unless the simulations show otherwise. A similar setting should be used from the PHY vendor if possible.

GUIDELINE: Design properly for OTG operation, if used.

When On-the-Go (OTG) functionality is used, the SoC can become a host or endpoint. When in host mode consider the power delivery, such as when you are supporting a USB Flash drive, or potentially a USB Hard Drive. These power requirements and reverse currents must be accounted for typically through the use of external diodes and current limiters such as those used on the Intel development kits for Intel® Arria® 10 SoC.

For more information, refer to the Intel® Arria® 10 SoC Development Board Schematics for more information.