A High-Signal-Integrity PCB Trace Composed of Multiple Segments for GHz VLSI Packaging: Its Prototyping and Performance Analysis

High signal integrity (SI) is strongly required in PCB traces under GHz clock frequencies for the next generation of VLSI packaging. Unfortunately, however, conventional techniques based on characteristic impedance matching cannot work well with GHz digital signals. In order to overcome this problem, we have previously proposed a novel PCB trace structure called "Segmental Transmission Line (STL)." In this paper, we design STLs for GHz bus-systems in which a high SI is indispensable, and demonstrate the high effectiveness of the STL showing the waveforms observed in the STL prototypes. Furthermore, the STL is analyzed in the frequency domain to demonstrate its mechanism of high robustness against frequency fluctuations.