Performance Impact of Simultaneous Switching Output Noise on Graphic Memory Systems

Simultaneous switching output noise (SSO) in single-ended signaling systems is one of the major performance limiters as data rate scales higher. This paper studies the impact of SSO on high performance graphic memory systems (GDDR3/4) using a systematic approach considering both signal and power integrity simultaneously. Specifically, power distribution network (PDN) and channel models are co-simulated in order to study the impact of SSO noise on channel voltage and timing margin. The reference voltage (VREF) noise is also considered as SSO noise couples to both signal and VREF. A methodology for characterizing the system performance by separating high and medium frequency analysis is demonstrated. The worst case system performance is simulated by varying data patterns to excite either medium (100-300 MHz) or high (GHz) frequency noise. A data bus inversion (DBI) coding has recently introduced in GDDR4 to remedy SSO noise and its effectiveness is also investigated in this paper. Finally, the system performance is compared between 4-layer flip-chip and 2-layer chip-scaled packages.