High-Speed Serial Interconnects: Technical Advantages, IC, and System Design Strategies

Companies across a wide range of industries are witnessing a transition from parallel to high-speed serial I/O solutions to reduce system costs, simplify system design, and provide scalability to meet new bandwidth requirements. Serial solutions will ultimately be deployed in nearly every type of electronic products imaginable, from chip-to-chip interfacing, backplane connectivity and system boards, to box-to-box communications. This document focuses on the dynamics of this transition in the connectivity solutions market. Standards discussed include PCI Express, XAUI, HyperTransport, and RapidIO.