Renesas Introduces Industry’s First PCIe Gen6 Clock Buffers and Multiplexers

Controller Master


Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced the first clock buffers and multiplexers that meet stringent PCIe Gen6 specifications. Renesas, the industry’s undisputed leader in timing solutions, is offering 11 new clock buffers and 4 new multiplexers. The new devices, which also support and provide extra margin for PCIe Gen5 implementations, complement Renesas’ low-jitter 9SQ440, 9FGV1002 and 9FGV1006 clock generators to offer customers a complete PCIe Gen6 timing solution for data center/cloud computing, networking and high-speed industrial applications. The PCIe Gen6 standard supports extremely high data rates of 64 GT/s while requiring very low clock jitter performance of less than 100fs RMS. Renesas’ new RC190xx clock buffers and RC192xx multiplexers have PCIe Gen6 additive jitter specs of only 4fs RMS, making them virtually noiseless, and thereby future-proofing customer designs for the next generation of industry standards.

“PCIe Gen6 timing will be at the heart of new equipment in data centers, high-speed networking and other applications,” said Zaher Baidas, Vice President of the Timing Products Division at Renesas. “As we have done for preceding generations, Renesas is providing customers with the first timing solution to enable these new, higher-performance systems. Our customers know that we have the technical expertise and market knowledge to ensure that their products will be able to meet future requirements as well.” “By delivering the first discrete timing solution for PCIe Gen6, Renesas is enabling customers to develop the next-generation of high-performance systems,” said Rich Wawrzyniak, Principal Analyst for Semico Research. “It will be interesting to see the innovative implementations that result from this new capability, especially when considering how solutions for the emerging Chiplet market are starting to evolve, with the need for increasing speed and bandwidth as an underlying constant.”

Key Features of Renesas’ PCIe Gen6 Clock Buffers and Multiplexers

  • Ultra-low 4fs PCIe Gen6 additive jitter, 1.4ns in-out delay, 35ps out-out skew, and -80dB Power Supply Rejection Ratio (PSRR) @100kHz easily ensure robust system design
  • 30 percent space-saving compared to earlier devices
  • Selectable SMBus addresses allow easy use of multiple devices
  • SMBus write-protect feature enhances system security
  • Loss-Of-Signal (LOS) output supports system monitoring and redundancy
  • 4-wire Side-Band interface supports high-speed serial output enable/disable and device daisy-chaining
  • Power Down Tolerant (PDT) and Flexible Start-up Sequencing (FSS) features ensure good behavior under abnormal system conditions

Winning Combination
Renesas has combined the new RC190xx clock buffers and RC192xx multiplexers with numerous analog and power offerings to create a new Winning Combination that provides full power and timing for Intel’s latest generation Xeon CPU platform. The pre-tested design includes the Renesas 9SQ440 clock generator, multiple smart power stage devices, an LDO, a USB host controller, and a DDR5 server PMIC. Renesas offers more than 300 Winning Combinations with compatible devices for a wide range of applications and end products.

About Renesas Timing Solutions

Renesas offers the broadest and deepest silicon timing portfolio in the industry. In addition to a wide line of buffers and clock synthesizer products, the company delivers leading-edge system timing solutions to resolve timing challenges in wireless infrastructure, networking, data centers, and consumer applications. Proven expertise spanning more than twenty years in both analog and digital timing produces a portfolio that features the lowest phase noise and highest performance along with advanced timing technology. Renesas is the only “one-stop-shop” for timing solutions, offering expertise and products from full-featured system solutions to simple clock building-block devices. Renesas offers a complimentary Clock Tree Design Service where in-house experts assist customers in building a new clock tree from the ground up or evaluating and improving an existing clock tree design.

Availability

The RC190xx buffers are offered in 4-, 8-, 13-, 16-, 20- and 24-output configurations. The RC192xx multiplexers include 2-, 4-, 8- and 16-output versions. The new devices are offered in packages as small as 3 mm x 3 mm. All of the new devices are available now, along with an evaluation board schematic.