Credo Conducts First Public Demonstrations of 28G and 56G NRZ SerDes Technology

Shows Single-Lane 50G in Chip-to-Chip, Chip-to-Module and Backplane Applications

Hong Kong and Milpitas, Calif. -- January 21, 2015 – Credo Semiconductor, a global innovation leader in Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) technology, today announced it will conduct multiple demonstrations of its 28G and 56G NRZ SerDes technology at the upcoming DesignCon 2015 in Santa Clara, Calif. The company will show chip-to-chip, chip-to-module and backplane level reaches with Amphenol(Booth #635), Molex (Booth #619) and TE Connectivity (Booth #743). These represent the first public demonstrations of the Credo transceiver technology, including the first SerDes IP to achieve over 57.5 Gbps speeds using NRZ signaling.

“As the first company to deliver CMOS silicon integrating 56G SerDes IP, we are now able to show how connector, cable and optical component manufacturers can deliver single-lane 50G and Nx56G capabilities to data center and enterprise applications,” said Jeff Twombly, vice president of Business Development at Credo. “As a result, equipment manufacturers will soon have access to products thatenable a significant increase in bandwidth using their existing infrastructure and testing methodologies.”

Demonstrations with Amphenol

Credo will conduct two demonstrations with Amphenol. The first demonstration will show 56G NRZ transport over real-world application distances using Amphenol’s Paladin™ backplane interconnect system and Amphenol’s UltraSpeed™ low-loss PCB technology.

“Paladin is Amphenol’s latest breakthrough backplane interconnect offering,” said Mike Snyder, project lead for the Paladin development effort. “Paladin incorporates advancements resulting in the most linear transmission and lowest crosstalk connector on the market. The demonstration with Credo is significant because it is the first practical example that technology is capable of supportingbackplane roadmaps to 56G with NRZ signaling.”UltraSpeed utilizes material and process improvements that result in significantly lower absorptive loss in the PCB and can be leveraged in applications to run faster or further than current PCB designs.

The second demonstration will show 28G/lane transport over Amphenol’s QSFP28 cable assembly supporting nine-meter copper cable. The cable assembly setup includes the Amphenol Ultraport QSFP I/O connector and Amphenol's industry compliant measurement cards. The setup is intended to demonstrate copper cable length expansion capability for 100G Ethernet, IBTA EDR and other 28G/lane interconnection systems.

Demonstrations with Molex

Credo Semiconductor and Molex Incorporated, Lisle, Ill., will use a high-speed copper cable to demonstrate 50 Gbps NRZ live serial traffic on the zQSFP+™ form factor.

“This demonstration will highlight the feasibility of running extremely high, next-generation data rates, even on form factors that are already in use,” said Joe Dambach, product manager, Molex.

Credo will be supplying transmitting and receiving electronics, and will drive a cable assembly using a 50 Gbps, NRZ encoded data stream, demonstrating this level of performance at acceptable BER across existing interconnects. This demo utilizes a Molex zQSFP+ cable assembly, and a zQSFP+ SMT connector interface.

Demonstrations with TE

TE Connectivity and Credo are jointly demonstrating 56Gb/s NRZ signaling over a backplane application using TE’s STRADA Whisper backplane connector system incorporating a cabled backplane structure. The STRADA Whisper connector family is the de facto industry benchmark backplane connector for applications at 25Gbps and above.

“This demo provides solid evidence of the multi-generational performance that existing STRADA Whisper connectors offer to equipment OEMs,” said Doug Lawrence, product manager, TE Connectivity. “The excellent performance being exhibited is due to the exceptionally low cross talk offered by the STRADA Whisper connector and the low loss provided by TE’s TurboTwin twinax cabled backplane system. STRADA Whisper cabled backplane systems have set an industry trend in equipment developed for 25Gbps and beyond due to their cost-effective superiorelectrical performance that will support future data rates, as proved in this demo.”

About Credo Semiconductor

Credo Semiconductor is a provider of high performance mixed-signal integrated circuits and IP targeting the data center and enterprise networking markets. The company’s SerDes technologies enable optimized solutions for leading edge speed, power, and signal processing requirements. For more information, please visit www.credosemi.com.