Astera Labs: Smart Retimer Portfolio for PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 Solutions

Astera Labs, Inc. launched its Aries portfolio of Smart Retimers for PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 technology.

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They are designed to empower system designers to double the signal reach and achieve plug-and-play interoperation without compromising interconnect topologies at 32GT/s speeds of PCIe 5.0 technology. The company delivers working Smart Retimer SoCs for PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 applications with up to 32 bi-directional lanes.

“Astera Labs is in the business of removing bottlenecks, wherever they appear in a system,” said Jitendra Mohan, CEO, Astera. “Rather than taking an incremental approach to adding bandwidth capabilities, we took a ground-up approach to optimize our Retimers for workload-optimized platforms that demand low latency and cloud-scale management capabilities. Built in the cloud, for the cloud, with our Aries portfolio we are pioneering PCIe Smart Retimer solutions for the industry.“

Highlights:

Heterogeneous computing and workload-optimized platforms are redefining the connectivity backbone in the next gen of servers. This new backbone requires faster and lower-latency interconnects. The deployment of PCIe 4.0 with 16GT/s and PCIe 5.0 with 32GT/s helps enable this fast connectivity backbone, but requires a high-speed signal reach extension solution to overcome signal integrity challenges. Retimers, first defined in the PCIe 4.0 spec, compensate for the signal lost by retransmitting a fresh copy of the signal every time, doubling the reach between a root-complex and end-point devices.

Aries Smart Retimer is designed to eliminate signal integrity issues for PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 interconnects in data-centric applications.
Features an architecture that enables the Retimer platform to learn, automatically adapt, and select optimized adjustments for a robust link-up and plug-and-play inter-operation.
Delivers 2x lower power, lower latency, and uses 2x fewer components than alternative solutions.
Allows data center system designers to future proof their systems, delivering a reach extension solution that can easily and quickly scale from PCIe 4.0 to 5.0 architecture.
Designed to support an array of system topologies and applications including all PCIe clock modes (SRIS, Common Clock, and SRNS), several bifurcation combinations (1×16, 2×8, 4×4 etc.), and the Intel Retimer spec.
Aries Retimers for PCIe 4.0 are being successfully designed-in by customers.
The company has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.), a semiconductor foundry, to produce solutions that are innovative throughout the entire supply chain.
Operating exclusively in the cloud for product development, Astera is one of the first to develop complex SoCs entirely on the cloud and achieve a high degree of operational flexibility. This approach allowed it to accelerate time to market, reduce costs, and to conduct extensive simulations to ensure a quality design.
The firm partnered with TSMC to manufacture its Smart Retimers with TSMC’s process technologies, enabling it to ramp production to meet customer demand.

“We are very pleased with the result of our collaboration with Astera Labs in manufacturing its Aries Smart Retimers, which are designed to improve connectivity for workload-optimized platforms,” said Bradford Paulsen, SVP, business management, TSMC North America. “TSMC continues to strengthen our trinity of strengths in technology leadership, manufacturing excellence, and customer trust, which enable us to best satisfy every customer’s requirements.“

The Aries Retimer portfolio supports both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 architectures and comes in x16 and x8 form factors.

Resources:
Article: Connectivity remains central to mainstreaming AI, machine learning workloads
Video: PCIe Retimers Overview
Blog: PCIe Retimers vs. Redrives: An Eye-Popping Difference
Demo: Aries PCIe Smart Retimers in NVMe SSD applications (video)
Webinar: Retimers to the Rescue

Read also:
Atera Labs: PCIe 5.0 Retimer Technology
Supporting diverse interconnect topologies, plug-and-play interoperation at speeds up to 32 gigatransfers/s
June 7, 2019 | Press Release