Crosstalk (signal integrity)
Beginner
When a busy wire nudges the wire next to it. The nudge can speed a signal up, slow it down or cause a blip.
Novice
Interference between neighboring wires. Two wires running side by side act like a small capacitor, so when one switches it pushes on the other: it can delay or speed up the neighbor’s signal, or put a brief false blip (a glitch) on a wire that should be quiet.
Expert
Coupling capacitance lets a switching aggressor net change a victim net’s delay (delta delay) or inject a glitch (noise). The effect depends on whether the two nets’ switching windows overlap and how they align, and the windows themselves depend on delays, so signal-integrity-aware STA iterates until they converge. Noise analysis checks whether a glitch is large enough to propagate or be captured.
Explained in Signoff (Design Flow).