10Gb/s Serial Backplane Retimer

The GN2405 and GN2406 are fully pin compatible quad repeater/re-timer devices designed to enhance the reach and robustness of high speed serial links by compensating for transmission losses and re-setting the crosstalk and jitter budget. These feature Gennum's proven reference-free Clock and Data Recovery (CDR) architecture which simplifies system design and reduces overall cost. Each channel supports independent locking to data rates from 9.95 - 11.3Gb/s. To enable backward compatibility with legacy data rates, half rate (5Gb/s) and quarter rate (2.5Gb/s) operation is also supported. Other rates can be supported using the re-timer bypass feature. The GN2406's high sensitivity limiting amplifiers removes the need for standalone limiting amplifiers in optical module applications. The GN2405 can be used as a transmit CDR in module applications as its input equalizer can compensate for trace and connector losses. A combination of the output de-emphasis and limiting amplifier can compensate for up to 28dB of loss. Combining these features with the low output jitter of the devices will result in extremely robust high-speed backplane links.

The GN2405 and GN2406 can be used as backplane extenders in Infiniband Quad Data Rate (QDR), 10GbE or any system running 10G serial over the backplane. The retiming capability and high input jitter tolerance of the devices improve crosstalk performance, which is a significant issue in dense, high speed backplanes. Copper cable or backplane trace losses of up to 28dB can be compensated using the output de-emphasis capability.