SPRAD06B March 2022 – November 2024 AM620-Q1 , AM623 , AM625 , AM625-Q1
A metric to establish a maximum length is Manhattan distance. The Manhattan distance between two points on a PCB is the length between the points when connecting them only with horizontal or vertical track segments. A reasonable limit to the trace route length is to its Manhattan distance plus some margin. CACLM is this limit and it is defined as the Clock Address Control Longest Manhattan distance.
Given the clock and address pin locations on the processor and the DDR4 memories, the maximum possible Manhattan distance can be determined given the placement of these parts. It is from this distance that this rule-of-thumb limit on the lengths of the routed track for the CK and ADDR_CTRL routing groups is determined.
It is likely that the longest CK and ADDR_CTRL Manhattan distance will be for Address Input A13 on the DDR4 SDRAM device, because it is at the farthest corner in the placement. Assuming A13 is the longest, calculate CACLM as the sum of CACLMY(A13) + CACLMX(A13) + 300 mils. The extra 300 mils allows for routing past the first DDR4 SDRAM and returning up to reach pin A13. Use this as a guideline for the upper limit to the length of the routed traces from the processor to the first SDRAM.