TO816P block diagram
IDT's SIP signal integrity products has a new addition, the 8-lane TO816P (Fig. 1) PCI Express Gen 3 retimer. It cleans up PCI Express signals and is especially useful in signal challenged areas such as transitions between board and backplane. A retimer can improve reliability, run length and performance. The 4-lane 89HT0808P is also available.
The 8 Gbit/s PCI Express retimers like the TO816P have a latency less than 30ns. PCI Express repeaters have less latency but only eliminate Deterministic Jitter (Dj). Retimers also remove Random Jitter (Rj). The IDT chips' have a CTLE (Continuous Time, Linear Equalizer) receiver with 5-tap adaptive DFE (Decision-Feedback Equalization) equalizers corrects for RX input channel losses and jitter. On the transmitter side there is a 4-tap FIR (Finite Impulse Response) equalizer for TX wave shaping and output channel pre-compensation. The retimer has automatic equalization training, rate change detection and adjustment and device calibration. They support independent and spread-spectrum reference clocks.
The chip has built-in routing support for pin swapping that can also handle rerouting for failed lanes. It also has an on-chip eye capture feature. Configurationis handle via I2C. The retimers also support PCI Express hot swapping and all PCI Express power-state transitions and power savings modes.
The 4-lane 89HT0808P and 8-lane 89HT0816P re-timers are available in 100-pin and 196-pin BGA packages respectively. Pricing starts at $6.55.