Broadcom PCIe Gen 5.0 SerDes, Switches and Custom Silicon Products

Broadcom Inc. announced its PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio is setting the foundation for the ecosystem to build high-performance, next-gen servers.

The PCIe Gen 5.0 SerDes, switches and custom silicon products, which are available to OEMs, ODMs, and cloud providers, are being tested and demonstrated for interoperability.

“For the past 20 years, PCIe has been the most critical and widely-adopted protocol for interconnecting CPUs, GPGPUs, FPGAs, and storage. Broadcom’s market-leading PCIe heritage and new PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio gives us the ability to seamlessly unify the data center where high-speed computing, low latency, and data processing is critical,” said Jas Tremblay, VP and GM, data center solutions group. “Our industry-leading PCIe Gen 5.0 portfolio ensures the ecosystem has the platforms needed to enable new applications such as AI/ML and cloud computing where large amounts of data are moving at an increasingly fast, real-time pace.“

PCIe Gen 5.0 benefits
PCIe Gen 5.0 offers double the speed over PCIe 4.0 to support data centers and storage servers supporting AI/ML, and hyperscale compute systems requiring high-performance, low-latency, scalable, cost-effective PCIe fabrics.

Wide-spanning portfolio featuring industry-first solutions
The company’s connectivity portfolio of PCIe Gen 5.0 products includes some of the lowest power, highest lane count, and lowest latency available in the industry.

From ASICs to SerDes to switch and embedded analyzers, the firm is enabling PCIe Gen 5.0 with a variety of products:

Customized ASIC development support, with 32GT/s PCIe 5.0 SerDes in 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm process technologies, along with the support of PCIe 5.0 products.
32GT/s PCIe SerDes, featured on its PEX89000 PCIe Gen 5.0 series of switches, delivers an improvement in power-per-gigabyte of data transfer over previous gens.
PEX89000 switches consume less than half the power of Gen 5.0 switch alternatives and provide best Gen 5.0 SerDes electrical performance headroom above the standard. They also includes enhanced security features, including attestation and SPDM1.1, as well as telemetry and diagnostic features.
Embedded analyzer in PCIe switch silicon, enabling trace capabilities in system with the PEX89000 switch family.
Flexible PEX89000 evaluation boards for Gen 5.0 interop activity, including multiple expansion slots to evaluate complex systems with connectivity for host, GPGPU, NIC, re-timer, and NVMe devices.
QoS features to manage congestion.

End-to-end ecosystem
The company is committed to and invested in the industry’s interoperability of PCIe Gen 5.0. From end-to-end demonstrations at industry events to the shipment of hundreds of evaluation boards, it is facilitating the ecosystem’s transition to PCIe Gen 5.0 as the technology is maturing and the dependency for its evaluation boards is growing.

Leading suppliers of accelerated computing platforms, processors, GPGPU, NVMe, re-timer, and test equipment products have received the company’s PCIe Gen 5.0 evaluation boards for interoperability and demonstrations:

Accelerated computing providers: Nvidia
GPGPU suppliers: Intel and AMD
NVMe suppliers: Samsung, Kioxia, Intel, and other NVMe suppliers
Re-timer suppliers: Astera Labs and other re-timer suppliers
Test equipment suppliers: SerialTek, and other test equipment suppliers
50+ OEMs and ODMs

“AMD and Broadcom have continued our longtime interoperability testing relationship,” said Raghu Nambiar, corporate VP, datacenter ecosystems and solutions, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.). “As leading innovators of next-gen technology, we are dedicated to providing in-depth testing to help ensure PCIe Gen 5.0 systems, running business-critical applications in modern data centers, can perform successfully and are in-line for market implementation.”

“Astera Labs and Broadcom’s PCIe 5.0 solutions are critical to support the high-bandwidth connectivity demands of today’s workload optimized platforms,” said Sanjay Gajendra, chief business officer, Astera Labs, Inc. “Our industry leading Aries PCIe 5.0 Smart Retimers with purpose-built fleet management features, coupled with Broadcom’s PEX89000 switch chip, enable a robust PCIe,nnectivity solution with seamless interoperation to unlock the many benefits of heterogeneous compute and composable infrastructure.”

“Intel and Broadcom continue to work together to bring advanced PCIe technologies to market, and PCIe 5.0 technology continues our long history of enabling the ecosystem with the robust building blocks needed to build a high-performance server solution,” said Dr. Debendra Das Sharma, senior fellow, chief architect, IO technology and standards, Intel Corp. “As a leading contributor to the PCIe .0 standard, Intel is now sampling the industry’s first PCIe 5.0 based server platform. We are delighted that Broadcom is also contributing to the ecosystem with PEX89000 switch chips, SerDes, and PHY technologies.“

“PCIe 5.0 technology enables game-changing performance and throughput levels to compute-intensive workloads in the data center, especially for flash-based solid state drives,” said Neville Ichhaporia, VP, SSD marketing and product management, Kioxia America, Inc. “By working closely with Broadcom, we can ensure our drives will be a part of a seamless and successful transition to next-gen technologies.“

“As cutting-edge AI continues to spread across industries, demand for our multi-GPU systems has never been greater,” said Charlie Boyle, VP and GM, DGX systems, Nvidia Corp. “Nvidia is working closely with Broadcom to incorporate their PCIe gen 5 switches into our DGX system lineup to help provide our customers with the best tools to accelerate their work.“

“Samsung has been working closely with Broadcom to ensure that PCIe Gen 5.0 interoperability and testing is seamless,” said Soonjae Won, corporate VP, solution product and development, S amsung Electronics Co., Ltd. “Our new PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe drives, together with the Broadcom PEX89000 switch, deliver an industry-first in the ecosystem with next-gen PCIe end-to-end solutions enabling large-scale deployment in the data center.”

In addition to the active interop testing of the company’s PCIe Gen 5.0 evaluation boards, Intel and Samsung recently unveiled PCIe Gen 5.0 end-to-end demonstrations:

At the Intel Innovation Conference, Intel cleanly linked end-to-end, from Eagle Stream to PEX89000 to the Astera Labs Aries PCIe 5.0 Smart Retimers, to Samsung PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe: Intel Innovation.
Samsung demonstrated an end-to-end interoperability in November at Samsung Tech Day.