Rambus, Samsung team up to develop 56G SerDes PHY on 10nm LPP process, support transition to 400GbE Ethernet

Rambus Inc. announced Thursday that it is partnering with Samsung Electronics for its recently launched 56G SerDes PHY to be developed on Samsung’s 10nm LPP (Low-Power Plus) process technology.

The 56G SerDes PHY delivers enterprise-class performance across the challenging signaling environments typical of high-speed communication systems and provides PAM-4 and NRZ signaling with a scalable ADC-based (analog-to-digital converter) architecture. This new, flexible architecture addresses the long-reach backplane requirements for the industry transition to 400 GB Ethernet applications.

Rambus’ SerDes interfaces are high-quality, complete PHY solutions designed with a system-oriented approach in mind to maximize flexibility and make them easy to integrate. They have been optimized for power and area at peak bandwidth and enable customers to differentiate, while maintaining complete compatibility with industry standards.

The SerDes interface family includes a range of solutions to meet your speed and application needs. Running up to 56gigabits per second (Gbps), Ranbus’ multi-protocol PHYs support server, storage, networking, graphics and optical applications.

The SerDes PHY includes a Physical Media Attachment (PMA) hard macro and Physical Coding Sub-layer with Built-in Self-Test (PCS-BIST) soft macro. That simplifies integration and minimizes time-to-market. The PHYs can also be configured to multiple channel widths and packaging options. Outside of the PHY itself, Rambus’ solutions also include complete documentation and access to in-house experts for optional design integration and bring-up support services to make integration as straightforward as possible.

Up to 28Gbps rates, NRZ is the preferred and standardized encoding scheme which consists of 1’s and 0’s. NRZ is also referred to as PAM2 (pulse amplitude modulation, 2-level), due to its two amplitude levels which contain 1 bit of information in every symbol. With serial data rates hitting 56 Gb/s per channel, signal impairments caused by increased bandwidth has prompted the high-speed serial data industry to adopt PAM4, or 4-level pulse amplitude modulation.

For PAM4 signals, the baud rate equals one-half the bit rate and the Nyquist frequency equals one-fourth the bit rate. Compared to PAM2/NRZ, PAM4 cuts the bandwidth for a given data rate in half by transmitting two bits in each symbol. This allows engineers to double the bit rate in the channel without doubling the required bandwidth.

The Rambus industry-standard interface offerings are high-quality, complete PHY solutions designed with a system-oriented approach to maximize flexibility in challenging system environments.

“There is a demand for increased bandwidth and higher performance systems with the rise of data across enterprise applications,” said Luc Seraphin, senior vice president and general manager of the Rambus Memory and Interfaces Division. “Our partnership with Samsung enables us to bring more solutions quickly to market that address the process, power and performance challenges of today’s complex data centers. We are pleased Samsung has selected to work with us, following our successful partnership of the 28G SerDes PHY on their 14nm LPP process technology.”

“Network application is one of our key segments of focus and the composition of our 10LPP network solution and the Rambus 56G solution will be the most competitive choice for high-performance and low-power consumption,” said Ryan Lee, vice president of the Foundry Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics. “Rambus has been a long-term strategic partner with Samsung for high-speed SerDes IP, and this 56G SerDes collaboration will pave the way for the explosive data processing requirements to come.”


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