A live product demonstration from DesignCon 2023 highlights the outstanding PCIe 6.0 performance of both a Samtec Flyover® high-speed cable assembly and a Rohde & Schwarz® ZNA vector network analyzer.
In this short video, Greg Vaught, VNA Product Planning Manager with Rohde & Schwarz, and Matt Burns, Technical Marketing Manager at Samtec, walk us through the setup and describe the products and results measured.
A Rohde & Schwarz ZNA 67 Vector Network Analyzer is connected to a Samtec Si-Fly™ SI Evaluation Kit, with a differential input and differential output measurement on one of the Eye Speed® Ultra-Low Skew twinax cables.
The ZNA 67 shows frequency domain measurements like insertion loss (IL) and return loss (RL) out to 67 GHz. Both measurements pass the profiles as defined in the PCIe 6.0 specification. In the time domain, we see a TDR measurement that helps us locate connector and cable transitions along the signal path. The open-eye diagrams display the open signal path along the Si-Fly™ low-profile cable system. (see Figure 1).
Greg also discusses the ZNA’s de-embedding capabilities, showing results with de-embedding on and off (see Figure 2). This removes the effects of the fixture, such as insertion loss and reflections, showing the insertion loss, return loss, and time domain results just for the Samtec cable assembly itself, and none of the fixtures.
The DUT is a Samtec Si-Fly SI Evaluation Kit. It incorporates Samtec Flyover Cable technology, specifically the Si-Fly connector system. Si-Fly is designed to be an ASIC-adjacent interconnect system. It allows designers to break signals directly from the ASIC to the Si-Fly interconnect, and then use our ultra-low-skew Eye Speed® twinax cable to route high-speed signals – like 112 Gbps PAM4, or PCIe 6.0 (64 GTs) – to the front panel or to the backplane.
Si-Fly is an ultra-low profile cable assembly. It’s only 3.8 mm off the board, and it can reside under heat sinks or other cooling hardware. It’s available in up to 16 differential pairs and is rated at 112 Gbps PAM4 per lane.
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