Electronic – Do I need to control trace impedance for DDR2 memory

ddr2impedancepcb

I am going to try to interface low-speed 8bit DDR2 chip to FPGA, and I've got some questions crucial to make it work 🙂

3) What is up with controlled impedance of PCB traces? Why it's important? What will happen if I would just have usual non-controlled 0.15mm traces? (distance between FPGA & DDR2 chips is 5cm).

Aligning trace length (especially on data & clock lines) is pretty clear, shouldn't be a problem as distances & frequency is low. As far as I understand there is still some 5-20cm length difference tolerance on DQ, but no harm making it equal.

Best Answer

Since you mentioned that it will be low-speed then you most likely should not bother about impedance. The question is what exactly speed you are planning to go for?

My experience shows that you should think about impedance if the memory speed over 200MHz. If it's less than this number, there shouldn't be any problem, unless you have unusual PCB setup (6 layers, for example). But if you have, let's say, 4 layer PCB with two dedicated power planes, traces up to 3 inches can be even left without any termination at all. Just align the traces and you're done.

Anyway, if something went wrong, you always have the possibility to talk with memory on lower speeds.