The upcoming PCIe® 7.0 specification is intended to enable 128 GT/s data rates. It continues PCIe’s trend of double speeds 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 Center, HPC, Automotive, IoT, and Military/Aerospace.”(1)
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.
In this video, Ralph Page, Systems Architect at Samtec, walks us through the setup and signal path.
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 coax 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 end one of a NovaRay cable assembly. The signal travels through 20” of 34 AWG Samtec Eye Speed® ultra-low skew twinax cable, to another NovaRay cable connector, to another NovaRay board level connector.
The signal then runs back to the Bulls Eye, and back to the Alphawave chip for analysis. Speaking of that analysis, the eyes are wide open, with a BER of e-8.
Samtec has a variety of board-to-board and cable-to-board connector solutions that can support Gen 7.0 performance. Speaking of performance, we also unveiled at SC 23 a live product demonstration of an asynchronous 224 Gbps PAM4 system.
If you have questions about this demo or other SI-related questions, please contact us at [email protected].
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