Thanks again. So with two level shifters available and two open pins on the 
1284P, which two of three lines, CLK, DATA, and LE, would be best to 
separate? From your description, are you saying that CLK and DATA are the 
two best separated?



On Sunday, October 18, 2015 at 12:30:45 PM UTC-4, gregebert wrote:
>
> Separating CLK or DATA for individual HV5530's will, as you said, 
> accomplish the same result. Separating LE is another option but you have to 
> be careful to keep-track of what has been shifted.  It's not obvious from 
> the diagrams I posted, but I actually have 4 serial data signals on the 
> ribbon-cable, and I jumper a separate serial-data signal on each board 
> (which limits my design to 4 boards or 24 digits with a single ribbon 
> cable).
>
> It's entirely possible to construct a single serial shift-chain, but you 
> have to be careful about timing between cascaded HV5530's. According to the 
> datasheet, the data hold-time is 10nsec. The min prop-delay of the 5530 is 
> not specified, so you have to assume it's zero. In order to guarantee 
> hold-time margin, the following equation applies:  Hold-margin = 
> MinPropDelay - ClkSkew - MinHoldTime. In this case, even if you have zero 
> CLK skew, you still have a 10nsec violation on the hold-time. Now, with 
> real silicon the MinPropDelay is finite, and I *suspect* it's more than 
> 10nsec, but I'm not going to risk it. In my case, I created a second clock 
> signal and I can guarantee hold-time margin through the sequencing of the 
> signals from my FPGA.
>
> Clock skew has a lot of subtleties. Yes, it's largely due to the 
> board-trace flight-times, but it's also due to finite risetime of the clk 
> signal itself and when each HV5530 determines the CLK is high or low. This 
> will vary from device to device, and the effect is worsened with slow 
> rise/fall times. Logic-level translators are quite slow, with delays in 
> 100's of nsec; I took no chances and used separate clks. I could have used 
> an inverter to create the second CLK phase, but that was adding another IC 
> and I already had a spare pin on the FPGA.
>

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