Marvell Announces Adoption of Its PCIe Retimers by Leading AI and Data Center Infrastructure Providers

Marvell Technology, Inc. announced industry adoption of the Alaska P PCIe retimer product line, which scales connections between AI accelerators, GPUs, XPUs, CPUs, SSDs, CXL devices and other components inside advanced data center systems.

The company PCIe retimers enable low-power, high-speed and low-latency connectivity that scales within servers and clusters to power accelerated AI data center infrastructure.

Server vendors have adopted Alaska P PCIe 6 retimers for their GPU and XPU platforms and have also deployed retimer cards in their general-purpose servers. In addition, PCIe active electrical cable (AEC) and active optical cable (AOC) offerings with Alaska P retimers are available from multiple cable and optical module partners, and the technology has also been evaluated for integration into several storage systems to improve the signal quality between the CPU and SSDs.

“The adoption of the Alaska P PCIe retimers underscores our leadership in enabling the AI infrastructure transition from traditional server architectures to disaggregated, accelerator-centric compute fabrics,” said Xi Wang, SVP and GM, connectivity business unit, Marvell. “Our SerDes innovation and deep ecosystem collaboration are helping the world’s top OEMs and interconnect partners scale performance for demanding AI workloads.”

“Supermicro is a leading provider of complete AI server solutions and has a history of being first-to-market with the most advanced technologies,” said Vik Malyala, president and MD EMEA, SVP, technology and AI, Supermicro. “Our industry-proven systems will support the Marvell Alaska P PCIe 6 retimer offerings, delivering to our customers the latest compute fabric capabilities supporting the next wave of AI innovation.”

“The explosive growth of AI workloads is driving unprecedented demands on data throughput and latency, making next-generation PCIe interconnect solutions essential,” said Vishwas Rao, SVP and GM, digital data networks business unit, TE Connectivity. “Marvell Alaska P PCIe retimers help provide the performance needed for PCIe AEC, while observing the scalability and power efficiency required for today’s and tomorrow’s accelerated infrastructure.”

“With the rapid evolution of new and more demanding AI workloads, there is an urgent need for scalable connectivity solutions that will enable data centers to quickly and easily build out their infrastructure,” said Rang-Chen Yu, VP, marketing, TeraHop. “Integrating Marvell retimers into our PCIe AEC and optical PCIe solutions will help customers advance further toward optical PCIe connectivity for AI and CXL infrastructure.”

Scaling Compute Fabrics for AI Era
AI and ML workloads continue to drive dramatic increases in data flows beyond servers to across racks, requiring XPU peripherals and scale-up fabrics built on PCIe 6 connectivity. Operating at 64GT/s using PAM4 signaling, PCIe 6 links require retimers to maintain signal integrity over the increasing distances between components in large-scale, accelerator-rich systems.

Built on industry-leading Marvell 5nm PAM4 SerDes technology, the Alaska P PCIe retimer family delivers low power and high performance, which compensates for the 40dB of channel loss that occurs while providing advanced telemetry, diagnostics and fleet-management capabilities. These features allow cloud operators to design efficient, reliable compute fabrics for accelerated infrastructure in the AI era. Developed to support a wide range of different cloud customer data center architectures, the firm’s Alaska P PCIe retimers are purposely built to be used on-board, integrated into copper cable connections or combined with electrical-to-optical components to produce optical PCIe cables.

By connecting both XPU peripherals and scale-up fabrics across AI clusters, Alaska P PCIe retimers are at the forefront of accelerated infrastructure, delivering the efficiency, scalability and signal integrity required for AI and cloud compute fabrics.

Availability:
Marvell Alaska P PCIe retimers are available through system vendors and cable partners.