PCI EXPRESS 5.0 transceiver and reference clock solution

Tektronix says it is the first company to offer early CEM fixtures for pre-compliance testing.

PCI EXPRESS continues to extend its industry leadership as the dominant high-speed serial computer bus by doubling bandwidth every three years and exceeding the target with the aggressive introduction of the 5.0 Base Specification (128 GB/s). This rapid development pace is expected to continue as PCI-SIG, the standard-setting body for peripheral component I/O data transfers, announced the PCI EXPRESS 6.0 specification (256 GB/s) to be delivered in 2021 and include multi-level PAM4 signalling.

“As the first company to offer CEM testing fixtures for PCIe Gen5, we are proud to help our customers once again speed the pace of innovation, giving them a leg up on competition,” says Chris Witt, Tektronix vice president and general manager.

The server/storage industry is rapidly transitioning to PCI EXPRESS 5.0 due to new requirements imposed by 400G Ethernet, cloud AI and modelling (co-processors), storage capacity, and NAND-based storage.

This rapid progression brings an entirely new problem set for test and measurement traditionally split into Base silicon level validation and CEM compliance testing with the PCI-SIG.

“Electronics designers today demand future-proofing to protect their innovations' longevity into tomorrow,” says Takeshi Shima, vice president of Anritsu corporation.  “Providing a solution through Gen6 gives our customers a sense of our commitment to stay with them on the cutting edge of development.”

“As PCIe becomes faster and more complex with the emergence of the Gen5 standard, engineers are faced with new design challenges, shorter time-to-market windows, new standards specifications to understand and apply, and new compliance testing requirements,” says David Bouse, PCI EXPRESS systems engineer at Tektronix. “It is vital to have a comprehensive test equipment and software solution in place prior to workshop certification.  Our PCIe 5.0 test and debug solution can easily guide the engineer through compliance testing and debug to ensure their design meets new standards with a high degree of confidence.”

The PCI EXPRESS 5.0 transceiver and reference clock solution from Tektronix was developed and continues to be aligned with the 5.0 Base specification, 5.0 CEM specification, and 5.0 test specifications.