Check out this video from DesignCon 2021 showing a PCIe® Gen 6 live demonstration. It includes a new cutting-edge Synopsys chip, and two Samtec new high-performance connector systems.
Ralph Page, Systems Architect at Samtec, walks us through the demo. He explains that the Samtec products are the new HSEC6 high-speed edge card connector, and the new 70 GHz Bulls Eye test point system. The Synopsys 6.0 PHY generates four 64 GT/s PAM4 differential signals. This is PCIe GEN 6 data rates.
Signal Path
The differential pairs route through an Isola Tachyon® 100 G test board, to a Samtec 70 GHz Bulls Eye® High-Performance Test System cable assembly, the BE-70A Series.
The signal travels from the Bulls Eye connector, through 8” of low-loss coax cable, to precision 1.85 mm Samtec compression mount jacks, mounted on the first HSEC6 SI Evaluation Board.
The signals then travel about 30 mm in the board to the HSEC6 connector, and then to the second evaluation board.
The differential pair exits the second evaluation board through another set of 1.85 mm compression mount jacks, through another 8” of coax cables, and are received back to the Bulls Eye test cable system, on the Synopsys board.
The data routes back to and is recovered by the Synopsys PCIe receiver.
Excellent Results
The eye patterns are wide-open. Although the overall channel loss -28 dB at 16 GHz, the Samtec HSEC6 Evaluation Platform accounts for approximately -3 dB.
The e-8 bit error rate (BER) is incredible. Post FEC is zero.
PCIe GEN 6
Synopsys’ new DesignWare IP for PCIe 6 supports 64 GT/s PAM4 signalling, FLIT mode, and L0p power state.
The new PCIe 6 interface doubles the Gigatransfer rate to 64 GT/s, which doubles effective bandwidth over PCIe 5.0 to 256 GB/s of throughput. It retains the same maximum of 16 lanes.
Samtec has a variety of Board-to-Board SI Evaluation Kits which provide system designers and SI engineers easy-to-use platforms for testing many of Samtec’s popular board-to-board connector products.
Go to Samtec.com/kits for more information about Samtec SI evaluation kits.
Please contact us at SIG@samtec.com if you have questions about the demo.
Here’s a previous demo with our friends at Synopsys, featuring connector systems for AI hardware designs. It’s a scalable, 32 GT/s silicon test platform that incorporates up to eight riser cards that include PCI Express® 5.0 interconnected with the Samtec Flyover® concept.
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