​​​​​​​Why doesn’t the IBIS-AMI model for the Agilex™ 7 FPGA F-Tile FGT receiver model match silicon behavior with PAM4 modulation?

Due to a problem in the IBIS-AMI RX model for the Agilex™ 7 FPGA F-Tile FGT receivers with PAM4 modulation, simulation results will not reflect the true behavior of the Agilex™ 7 FPGA F-Tile FGT RX PMA in silicon. This problem applies to all versions of the Agilex™ 7 FPGA F-Tile receiver IBIS-AMI models with PAM4 modulation. This problem does not affect FGT NRZ TX, FGT NRZ RX or FGT PAM4 TX modes of operation. This problem does not affect the Agilex™ 7 FPGA F-Tile FHT transceivers.

There is no plan to correct the Agilex™ 7 FPGA F-Tile FGT transceiver IBIS-AMI models.

To work around this problem you should design your channel in accordance with chapter “4. F-Tile FGT PAM4 Modulation Bounding Box” of Application Note “AN 969 F-Tile PMA Tuning Guidelines” that you can download from the Intel Resource Documentation Centre, here.