Designers know that redrivers are an essential part of solving signal integrity challenges in gigabit systems. But at speeds up to 8 GT/s in PCI Express 3.0 systems, linear redrivers are needed to also comply with PCI-SIG specs and with chipset vendors’ datasheets.
Everything is “smart” lately. But the brain added to your toaster needs some basic—yet elegant—peripheral controllers and sensors to be truly useful.
Move over CANbus, PCI Express is the latest communications technology found in automotive infotainment.
Capable of 10 Gbps speeds and beyond, DisplayPort requires linear redrivers to achieve proper signal integrity with link training.
If you’re designing with USB 2.0 or 3.0, you need to know these three things about moving USB signals around your system.
With its “insert either way” simplicity and legacy channel transport, Type-C is the last connector a user will ever need. But the burden’s now on the designer to understand Type-C.
PCIe Gen2 (Gen3 is still ramping up) is about as common on digital PCBs as is a terminal block or pin header. Nearly every CPU, MCU, fast peripheral, bus or nonvolatile (NV) memory sports PCIe. To connect all of these “dots” together requires a PCI Express switch or one of the creative variations thereof.
From PCIe to HDMI to DDR3, good quality signal switches can route your data and simplify designs—if you know how to use them.
Two sets of dynamics are on a collision course making an often overlooked technical detail—signal integrity on PCBs, cables, connectors, and IC chip sets—more important than ever. When clocks and switching speeds were in the hundreds of megahertz, digital signals implemented in standards like 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0, SCSI, PCI and others behaved as expected and systems functioned per spec.
Today’s new cars get decent mileage, are relatively safe and are considered stylish, so auto OEMs must add something special to stand out. Car tech is the cornerstone differentiator of many automobile companies’ product offerings. Lately the “killer features” that consumers want and will pay extra for include tech packages such as: an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system with smartphone integration, rear seat LCDs, and all-around cameras for safety.
