Why Do We Need SERDES?

By Jeff Galloway, Silicon Creations

Despite their design and verification complexity, SERDES have become an indispensable part of an SoC block. With SERDES IP blocks now available, it’s helped mitigate any cost, risk, and time-to-market escalation.

Today, links such as PCI Express, HDMI, and USB are ubiquitous. But it wasn’t that way 20 years ago. The last 20 years have seen an explosion in the number of serial-link applications. This article attempts to explain why serial links (and the SERDES that enable them) have become so popular. It will attempt to explain some of the underlying technology that makes serial links ubiquitous, and why that wasn’t the case 20 years go.

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