Welcome Home: DesignCon Returns to Santa Clara, Calif., in April

DesignCon, the premier high-speed communications and system design conference returns to its home at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif., with technical paper sessions, tutorials, industry panels, product demos, and exhibits April 5-7, 2022.

Education Highlights

DesignCon’s conference program covers all aspects of electronic design, including signal and power integrity, high-speed link design, and machine learning (ML).

DesignCon attendees have shown growing interest in signal integrity (SI) and power integrity (PI) topics. At the 2021 conference, attendees went to more sessions covering SI and PI topics at the die, chiplet, interposer, packaging, and system interface levels (Track 1) and power integrity, distribution, and management (Track 10). This trend was continued into the 2022 call-for-abstracts, where the same topics gained the highest number of submissions.

Interest in the core topic of SI analysis (Track 13) continued to be high for both the 2021 conference attendance and 2022 call-for-abstracts submissions. Though it is relevant to note that both 2020 and 2021 conference session attendance showed Track 1, specifically, to be the greatest topic of interest rather than Track 13 and optimizing high-speed link design (Track 7), which had previously been the highest tracks attended. Other topics of high interest and representation at DesignCon 2022 include photonics, 5G, and AI/ML.

Below are some of the highest rated sessions by DesignCon’s Technical Program Committee peer reviewers for the upcoming event:

“Validation of Achieving 200 Gb/s Signaling per Electrical Lane Over 1 Meter of Passive Twinaxial Copper Cable”: A joint effort from authors at MC Communications, Keysight Technologies, Rohde & Schwarz, Amphenol, Samtec, and Cisco, this paper explores a process for validation of 200 Gb/s signaling per electrical lane over 1 meter of passive twinaxial copper cable assemblies using predictive simulation models and measurements.
“Generalized ccICN (component contribution Integrated Crosstalk Noise)”: Presented by engineers at Intel, this session was top rated in its track and promises to be an interesting paper on PCIe gen 6 for high-speed signaling.
“Practical Methods of Estimating Dynamic Current for Calculating PDN Target Z”: From Keysight Technologies, Xilinx, and Picotest engineers, this session explores an option to apply measurement techniques to extract load transients with far less overhead.
“224Gbps-PAM4 End-to-End Channel Solutions for High-Density Networking System”: From Intel engineers, the specific recommendations in this paper are something attendees will be able to put to use immediately when they get back to their desks.
“Transient vs. Statistical: A Comparative Study on Practical Parallel Link Qualification Techniques”: This paper from Amazon engineers provides a side-by-side analysis of transient and statistical simulation methods and promises to be very interesting.
“OSFP/QSFP-DD 112G PAM4 Channel for 800G System Applications”: This tutorial from Luxshare-Ict and Xilinx engineers was the highest rated in its track by our peer reviewers and is an important topic for high-speed applications, especially with the focus on QFSP-DD (quad small form-factor pluggable double density).
“Design & Verification for High-Speed I/Os at 10 to 112 & 224 Gbps with Jitter, Signal Integrity, & Power Optimized”: This tutorial from Intel engineers will keep attendees up to date on latest design and verification developments, as well as architecture, circuit, and deep submicron process technology advancements for high-speed links.
“Modeling Passive Components for Power Integrity Simulations: How to Measure, How to Model, How to Use”: This panel currently has speakers from Keysight Technologies, Samtec, Teledyne LeCroy, Picotest, and ANSYS. It is expected to provide a lively and controversial discussion on passive component models for power integrity simulations.
“Test on Wheels: Test & Measurement for Automotive Standards”: With speakers planned from Valens, Ford Motor Company, Keysight Technologies, Analog Devices, BMW Group, and BitifEye Digital Technologies, this panel will address the timely topic of robustness in mission-critical consumer electronics relevant to SI.

Event Passes

The 2022 event pass will provide more options than previous years and more ways to connect with the education DesignCon offers.

Ahead of the event, DesignCon will offer a webinar “Ask an Expert Engineer” discussion exclusively for those registered for the Santa Clara, Calif., event, where some of the industry’s most respected and sought after engineers will gather to answer your questions.

At the event in April, conference passholders will continue to have access to the 14-tracks of education, with more than 100 sessions curated by our 97-person Technical Program Committee. But conference attendees will also have access to technical education on automotive electronics and intelligence, as DesignCon for the second year adds the Drive World conference as a complimentary track for All-Access and 2-Day passholders. And all DesignCon attendees will have access to two days of Embedded IoT World sessions, presented by IoT World at our event in April. In total, DesignCon is offering more than 125 educational sessions.

Post event, DesignCon will offer recordings of select technical sessions as online webinars, accompanied by new educational sessions for registered attendees. Attendees register once and receive access to the pre-event webinars, at-event sessions, post-event webinars, and the new “Current” newsletter.

All DesignCon attendees have access to networking opportunities, including the Welcome Reception the evening before the expo opens, and Booth Bar Crawls, presenting complimentary beverages and bites each afternoon of the expo. Additionally, all attendees have access to daily keynotes, panels, Chiphead Theater presentations, exhibitor-presented education, the Engineer of the Year and Best Paper Awards presentations, and the DesignCon expo floor.

Among 100+ exhibitors, DesignCon’s expo floor will present some of the industry’s most influential companies, including host sponsor Amphenol, Cadence, Keysight, Molex, Mouser, TE Connectivity, Teledyne LeCroy, and more. Experts from these companies will be on-site to answer design questions, provide advice on engineering, and present educational demonstrations on the latest in high-speed design tools, technologies, and developments.

Further Information

DesignCon’s 2022 exhibition is open Wednesday and Thursday, April 6-7; the conference is presented Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, April 5-7. Registration is open now. All attendees (conference and expo pass holders) to the in-person event will be entered into a sweepstakes with the opportunity to win a $1,000 gift card or other prizes throughout the event. Health and safety remains a top priority at DesignCon, with information on practices available on the event website. More information on the full event and its digital offerings is available on DesignCon.com.