PCIe 4.0 SerDes PHY

The Rambus PCI Express (PCIe) 4.0 SerDes PHY is designed to maximize interface speed in the difficult system environments found in high-performance computing. It is a low-power, area-optimized, silicon-proven IP designed with a system-oriented approach to maximize flexibility and ease integration for our customers. With the PCIe 4.0 controller core it comprises a complete PCIe 4.0 SerDes subsystem. Alternatively, it can be integrated with PIPE 4.2-compliant 3rd-party controllers. The PCIe 4 SerDes PHY supports PCIe 4.0, 3.0, and 2.0 and has full support for manufacturability.

How the PCIe 4.0 Interface Works

The Rambus PCIe 4.0 PHY with the PLDA PCIe 4.0 digital controller comprise a high-performance serial link subsystem. Optimized for power in challenging, high-loss channels, our PCIe 4.0 interface solution is ideal for performance-intensive data center, edge and graphics applications.

The PHY comes complete with a PMA hard macro that supports PCIe 4.0, 3.0, and 2.0 protocols and a physical coding sublayer (PCS) soft macro for PCIe that is PIPE 4.2 compliant. Integrated with the PLDA PCIe 4.0 digital controller, the PHY can also be paired with 3rd-party PIPE 4.2-compliant controllers.

PCIe 4.0 Interface Subsystem Example
PCIe 4.0 Interface Subsystem Example

The PHY has a minimal set of broadside control and are configurable in x2, x4 and x8 lane configurations. This gives the PHY improved flexibility and support for a wide range of applications. The PCIe 4.0 PHYs is rigorously tested through 3rd-party compliance testing and internal interoperability system testing.

In order to improve system margin and performance, our solution features transmit and receive equalization and full equalization adaptation. This ensures that data is recovered even in the presence of channel and system interference.

Our PCIe 4 SerDes PHY is available on TSMC, Global Foundry and Samsung process nodes.

Solution Offerings

SerDes Signal Integrity Challenges at 28Gbps and Beyond

SerDes Signal Integrity Challenges at 28Gbps and Beyond

Maintaining signal integrity has become increasingly difficult as data rates moves past 28Gbps to 56Gbps and beyond. Up to 28Gbps rates, NRZ is the preferred and standardized encoding scheme which consists of 1’s and 0’s. NRZ is also referred to as PAM2 (pulse amplitude modulation, 2-level), due to its two amplitude levels which contain 1 bit of information in every symbol. With serial data rates hitting 56 Gb/s per channel, signal impairments caused by increased bandwidth has prompted the high-speed serial data industry to adopt PAM4, or 4-level pulse amplitude modulation.

Protocol Compatibility

Protocol Signaling Rate (GT/s) Application
PCIe 2.0 4 High bandwidth peripherals and graphics cards
PCIe 3.0 8 Enterprise solutions and chip to chip connectivity
PCIe 4.0 16 Hyperscale data center and big data applications

Inventions

Phase Interpolator-Based CDR

Reduces cost, power and area of clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit and improves jitter performance in high-speed parallel and serial links versus PLL-based CDRs.
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