Channel Operating Margin (COM) Quick Start
Application Notes
Designers of serial communication links operating above 50 Gbps, and compliant to the most recent set of standards, are rapidly moving away from channel simulation and toward COM, to validate their channel designs. However, it is important to periodically check the COM results against those of a channel simulation, throughout the entire link design process. ADS now makes this a simple task, by adding a third type of channel simulation: COM. Using the same schematic design, users can now quickly change the target of their simulation run between: IBIS-AMI statistical, IBIS-AMI bit-by-bit, and COM, by simply clicking the appropriate radio button in the ADS ChannelSim controller configuration dialog. In this application note, we'll give a brief history and description of COM, explaining what it is, why it was created, how it is performing in real World design scenarios, and what its future looks like. We'll then get the reader up and running quickly with ADS's new COM simulation capability, using a standard ChannelSim design, which will look completely familiar to anyone having been using ADS for serial communication link design. Finally, we'll show how resulst compare between the 3 modes of simulation, for some particular current high speed (i.e. - >50 Gbps) standards, such as: IEEE 802.3cx, PCIe Gen. 6, and USB4 v2.