Serial Cables x16 Gen4 PCIe External Retimer-Based Host Board

Serial Cables LLC announced PCI4-AD-x16HE-RT-A its x16 Gen4 PCIe retimer host board.

Based on the PT4161L x16 PCIe 4.0 Smart Retimers from Astera Labs, Inc., the host card is ready for SRIS/SRNS and common clock direct attach applications.

The company’s experience in developing host cards has taught that an architectural focus on support for the reference clock (REFCLK), SRIS, bifurcation, hot-plug, and lane/port width control eased and enabled the development of this Astera Labs retimer board.

While PCIe switches are necessary for overall PCIe infrastructure, they are not always the only way to solve challenges involving signal integrity and PCIe bus extensions. Choosing Astera Labs as firm’s retimer supplier was an overall choice due to the pin-for-pin compatibility between the Gen4 and Gen5 PCIe specs as this will make the transition from Gen4 to Gen5 simple and painless.

“Astera Labs Smart Retimes for PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 interconnects are purpose-built for latency sensitive compute and storage applications,” said Sanjay Gajendra, chief business officer, Astera Labs. “We are excited Serial Cables identified our Aries PCIe Smart Retimers as the ideal solution to enable its new x16 Gen4 retimer host board.“

“Signal integrity continues to get more difficult as these bus speeds increase”, says Paul Mutschler, CEO, Serial Cables. “By developing this new x16 Gen4 PCIe retimer host board we are enabling the industry yet again with another unique and powerful option for always-challenging signal integrity concerns and we have many more variations that are still to come“.

The Serial Cables x16 Gen4 retimer host board is shipping in sample quantity. Production volume in 3Q20.

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January 15, 2020 | Press Release