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Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS), a premier chip and silicon IP provider making data faster and safer, today announced that Rambus has demonstrated its PCI Express® (PCIe) 5.0 digital controller IP on leading FPGA platforms. PCIe 5.0 performance at 32 GT/s in FPGAs using a soft controller is an industry first, and another demonstration of technical leadership from Rambus. This capability expands the use models of FPGAs by enabling multi-instance, switching and bridging applications and accelerates the performance of FPGAs used in defense, networking, and test and measurement markets.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – August 18, 2021 – Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS), a provider of industry-leading chips and silicon IP making data faster and safer, today announced the completion of the acquisition of PLDA. With this acquisition, Rambus expands its digital controller offerings with complementary CXL 2.0, PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 6.0 controller and switch IP, and gains critical building blocks for its CXL Memory Interconnect Initiative.

In this video, we demonstrate the PLDA XpressLINK Controller IP for CXL 2.0 and the CXL.mem protocol used to access Host-managed Device Memory, or HDM. This demonstration is performed using Intel’s Pre-Production Xeon CPU as a host, connected to an FPGA board, instantiating PLDA’s CXL Controller and CXL.mem test design. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.

With the draft specification available and the upcoming release of the final PCIe Gen 6 specification, system designers are beginning to plan how to build the specification’s new features into their products.

In the second of two joint webinars, PLDA and Siemens EDA present what you need to know about Gen 6 to build and verify your design using the updated protocol. In our first webinar, we focused on the differences between the older and new specifications. In this second session, we return to design considerations, then take a deep dive into how to verify your design.

• Expands digital controller IP portfolio with complementary CXL 2.0, PCIe® 5.0 and PCIe 6.0 controller and switch IP
• Enables integrated interface subsystem solutions for data center, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), and High Performance Computing (HPC)
• Provides critical building blocks for Rambus CXL Memory Interconnect Initiative to advance high-bandwidth connectivity

Certain applications and hardware types -- emerging memory, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and cloud servers, to name a few -- can realize significant performance advantages when a low latency interface is employed. The CXL (Compute Express Link™) standard was developed specifically as a low latency offshoot of the ever-popular PCIeTM (PCI ExpressTM), and is finding its footing in many of the applications listed.

Let’s compare typical latency of existing standards first. Data shown below is gathered from a variety of industry sources: 

In our last article, we address some of the changes in the PCIe 6.0 specification versus prior generations. Of note in that was that the release cadence of specifications has greatly increased.

As a reminder of how the PCIe specification has evolved:

Figure 1: PCIe Evolution

Looking at the table above, you can see that pre-4.0, specifications were updated every 4.6 years on average. However, since 4.0, the cadence has greatly increased, with a release every 2 years. A logical question here might be ‘why have 5.0 and 6.0 come so fast?’

Highlights:

• Optimized integration of PLDA CXL 2.0 controller and AnalogX ultra low power PHY reduces latency by over 50% and power by 40% compared to leading competitive solutions
• Improves system performance at no extra cost, while pre-configured integration reduces design time and speeds time-to-market

PLDA, the leading developer of high-speed interconnect silicon IP, and AnalogX, the leading provider of low power multi-standard connectivity SerDes IP solutions, today announced an optimized integration of PLDA CXL™ 2.0 controller and AnalogX 32G-MR PHY that reduces latency by 50% and power consumption by 40% compared to leading competitive solutions. 

Today, PLDA announced our PCIe 6.0 controller IP. This announcement builds on PLDA’s track record of being the high speed interface IP provider of choice.

As PCIe 6.0 is quite new, let’s run through a bit about how it differs from previous generations, and why this should matter to a system designer or chip architect as they consider their next generation designs.

Over the course of two decades, PCI Express® (PCIe®) has become the de-facto I/O interconnect in electronic systems, by providing the level of performance and reliability expected by cloud, enterprise, consumer, industrial, and automotive applications.