Embodiments of the present disclosure provide apparatus for using a compliance model to determine compatibility of a channel with a bus's chip I/O circuitry at its ends. The apparatus includes at least one processor and a memory coupled to the at least one processor. The processor is configured to: identify at least one design criteria; obtain boundary sets of frequency domain parameters for compliant signal channels known to achieve the design criteria; and verify whether a particular signal channel is compliant by comparing values of frequency domain parameters for the particular channel to one or more of the boundary sets of frequency domain parameters for the known compliant channels.