High-speed cable solution

31 July 2024 Interconnection

The upcoming PCIe 7.0 specification is intended to enable 128 GT/s data rates. It continues PCIe’s trend of doubling the speed every generation. According to PCI-SIG, “PCIe 7.0 technology is targeted to be a scalable interconnect solution for data-intensive markets like artificial intelligence/machine learning, data centres, HPC, automotive, IoT, and military/aerospace.”

PCIe 7.0 is targeted for release in 2025, and it probably won’t be in devices until 2027. But, at SC 23 in Denver, Samtec presented a proof-of-concept of a chip-adjacent, mid-board high-speed cable system operating at 128 GT/s – PCIe 7.0 specs – with excellent performance.

Specifically, an Alphawave PipeCORE test PHY is transmitting 128 Gbps PAM4 data. The signals travel to a Samtec BE70A, a Bulls Eye test point system, through low-loss coaxial cable, to Samtec precision 1,85 compression-mount RF connectors on a Samtec NovaRay evaluation kit.

NovaRay is a high-density, high-speed board-to-board, and cable-to-board connector system. The combination of extreme density and performance is critical as system sizes decrease and speeds increase.

A Samtec NovaRay connector mates with one end of a NovaRay cable assembly. The signal travels through 20 inches of 34 AWG Samtec Eye Speed ultra-low skew twinax cable, to another NovaRay cable connector, and then to another NovaRay board level connector. The signal then runs back to the Bulls Eye, and back to the Alphawave chip for analysis.

The analysis determined that the system produced a BER of 10-8.

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