Use these drills after completing all topics in SerDes & High-Speed I/O. Answer with boundary, mode, metric, artifact, owner, and regression.
[INT][AMS][SERDES-HIGH-SPEED-IO]
Q: Link comes up but BER spikes later. First hypothesis?
A:
Margin collapse from SI/thermal drift or unstable adaptation despite initial training success.
FOLLOW-UP TRAP: Declaring protocol clean after first link-up.[INT][AMS][SERDES-HIGH-SPEED-IO]
Q: What evidence separates firmware timeout bug from SI issue?
A:
Correlating state transitions with lane margin and analog error indicators under controlled conditions.
FOLLOW-UP TRAP: Changing timeout first and re-testing once.BOUNDARY -> MECHANISM -> METRIC -> ARTIFACT -> FIX -> REGRESSIONSERDES FLOW
training -> equalization -> lane margin -> protocol stabilityState boundary, mode, and evidence tag with every claim.
Always align analog, digital, and physical owners before signoff decisions.
Fixing averages while tails still fail.
Skipping package/supply evidence in jitter or SerDes issues.
Shipping with waivers that lack owner and expiration criteria.