Parade Roll Out PCIe 4.0 Retimer Chips

Parade Technologies, Ltd. introduces two products to its portfolio of high-speed data retimer products.

The PS8925 and PS8926 are retimer chips developed for PCI Express Rev. 4.0, supporting four and sixteen bidirectional lanes, respectively. In addition to supporting the 16Gb data rate offered by the PCIe 4.0 specs, they also support 2.5, 5, and 8Gb for backward compatibility with earlier PCIe revisions.

The PS8925 and PS8926 are among a first PCIe 4.0 retimer chips available. They are in compliance with the PCIe 4.0 specs and have been tested in multiple OEM PCIe 4.0 platforms.

Both solutions are designed for use in enterprise systems including servers and storage, and in high-performance workstations.

Such retimers are needed in high-speed data channels to maintain signal integrity across longer PCB traces, connector, and cables. The doubling of data rate that PCIe 4.0 offers comes with the tougher challenge of error-free signal propagation, which is why retimers are an integral part of the PCIe 4.0 spec and system implementation.

“PCIe has always been an important interface because it’s the technology leader that other high-speed data interfaces tend to follow,” said Jimmy Chiu, EVP, marketing, Parade. “Parade has a long history in suppling PCIe repeaters, starting with PCIe Gen 2 and Gen 3 in the past. Our success in development of these PCIe Gen 4 retimers also provides us optimized analog IP that can be leveraged for supporting the increasing data rates of other standards such as USB4, DisplayPort, and HDMI.“

The PS8925 and PS8926 include both adaptive CTLE and DFE equalization to compensate for up to 30dB channel loss at Nyquist frequency. In addition to supporting PCIe spec-complaint retimer operation for both SRIS and SRNS configurations, they can also support near-zero latency bit-level retiming. Both devices support -40°C to +85°C operation and use 0.9V and 1.8V power supplies.

• The PS8925, which supports four bidirectional PCIe lanes using eight high-speed differential channels, is available in a 5.5x10mm 146-ball BGA package.

• The PS8926, which supports 16 bidirectional PCIe lanes using 32 high-speed differential channels, is available in an 8.9×22.8mm 354-ball BGA package.

• Both products are sampling.