Rockchip Carrier Boards
Designing a carrier for a Rockchip SoM: power, high-speed routing and bring-up.
A carrier board turns a SoM into a product. It carries power input and sequencing, connectors, PHYs and any high-speed routing: PCIe, USB 3, HDMI and MIPI. Most first-spin carrier issues come from power-rail sequencing, PCIe reference clocks and resets, and MIPI lane mapping.
Key points
- Match impedance for PCIe (85 Ω diff), USB 3 (90 Ω), HDMI (100 Ω) and MIPI D-PHY (100 Ω), and keep lengths matched within pairs.
- Route PCIe PERST# and CLKREQ# as the module vendor specifies; the reset GPIO must match the DTS.
- Plan for a debug UART header and a MaskROM button on every board revision.