Silicon Labs Si5214x Low power, low jitter and ease-of-use PCIe clock generators
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Silicon Labs recently announced the Si5214x PCIe clock generators and Si5315x PCIe clock buffers, a family of nine off-the-shelf PCI Express parts. They offer the industry’s highest level of performance per watt for clocking applications required to meet PCI Express® Gen1/2/3 standards.
These clock generators and buffers have 2x lower power consumption than competitors yet provide up to 50% margin to PCI-Express jitter specifications. In addition they incorporate the industry’s highest level of signal integrity tuning with edge rate and skew controls to help address EMI and clock routing issues that may not be apparent until prototypes are built.
Low power, low jitter and ease-of-use will make the Si5214x PCIe clock generators and Si5315x PCIe clock buffers successful in many applications. These PCIe clocks and buffers are 2x lower power than competing devices and help support “green” initiatives. No competing solutions support I2C signal integrity tuning or integrate the current source reference resistor and all external resistor termination networks.
Benefits
Below is a summary of the benefits of the Si5214x PCIe clock generators and Si5315x PCIe clock buffers:
- High Level of Integration – parts use push-pull buffer technology that integrates all the external termination resistors reducing component count, cost, board space and power.
- Signal Integrity Tuning – these new parts have a number of built-in features designed to combat EMI like programmable edge rates and programmable skew control. These same features are also used to reduce RFI in applications where interference with 3G/4G radios must be optimized to improve device operation.
- Programmable Edge Rate - by providing programmable edge rate controls for each individual output, board designers can customize each output to its own load and trace length.
- Programmable Skew - by programming each individual clock output to have a different skew, the spur energy is spread out reducing EMI and power supply noise.
- Combining Programmable Edge Rate and Skew Control Features - by utilizing the I2C programmable edge rate and skew features in the PCIe clocks, each output can be individually tuned to the PCB environment, reducing EMI.