3.1
Overview of high-speed design
When designing a target board that will be connected to a DSTREAM-PT system, it is important to use
good digital design practice to achieve high Signal Integrity (SI).
While many target boards already take SI into consideration for trace signals, it is also important to use
the same design methodology for the debug signals. To achieve the high-data throughput that is required
to debug modern target systems, DSTREAM-ST units are designed to drive their JTAG interfaces at up
to 180MHz. To drive at this frequency, DSTREAM-ST units use fast output drivers with short rise-times.
Note
A target system might work perfectly when it is connected to an older or slower debug unit, but it could
fail to work with DSTREAM-ST because of the faster rise-times.
There are many design rules that you can implement to ensure high SI in the debug and trace interfaces:
Note
While these rules apply to all digital signals, Arm recommends giving special attention to the clock
signals,
TCK
,
RTCK
, and
TRACECLK
.
•
Avoid stubs
Where possible, debug and trace signals should be point-to-point between the driver and receiver of
the signal with no T-junctions or branches leading to other circuitry on the target board.
Target
Device
Debug
Connector
Figure 3-1 Point-to-point signal
For debug signals, pull-up or pull-down resistors are often required. Pull-up or pull-down resistors
might create a branch or
stub
in the signal path. It is important to keep the stub length in the signal
path as short as possible.
Target
Device
Debug
Connector
Stub
length
Figure 3-2 Stub length
If a signal is routed with a long stub, the signal from the driver is split two ways when it reaches the
T-junction. The signal that reaches the target device initially has a lower amplitude until the other half
of the signal has reflected back from the end of the stub. The reflection has the effect of creating a
stepped signal at the target device. A stepped signal at the target device can cause extra false signal
edges to be received.
3 Target board design
3.1 Overview of high-speed design
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