Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition User Guide: PCB Design Tools

ID 683619
Date 9/24/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.1. Simultaneous Switching Noise (SSN) Analysis and Optimizations

FPGA design has evolved from small programmable circuits to designs that compete with multimillion-gate ASICs. At the same time, the I/O counts on FPGAs and logic density requirements of designs have increased exponentially.

The higher-speed interfaces in FPGAs, including high-speed serial interfaces and memory interfaces, require careful interface design on the PCB. Designers must address the timing and signal integrity requirements of these interfaces early in the design cycle. Simultaneous switching noise (SSN) often leads to the degradation of signal integrity by causing signal distortion, thereby reducing the noise margin of a system.

Today’s complex FPGA system design is incomplete without addressing the integrity of signals coming in to and out of the FPGA. Altera recommends that you perform SSN analysis early in your FPGA design and prior to the layout of your PCB with complete SSN analysis of your FPGA in the Intel® Quartus® Prime software. This chapter describes the Intel® Quartus® Prime SSN Analyzer tool and covers the following topics: