There is no PCIe Gen5—yet—but there’s a 32Gbps/lane future out there and TE Connectivity demonstrated that future at this week’s DesignCon 2018. The demo’s real purpose was to show the capabilities of TE Connectivity’s Sliver connector system which includes card-edge and cabled connectors. In the demo at DesignCon, four channels carry 32Gbps data streams through surface-mount and right-angle connectors to create a mockup of a future removable-storage device. Those 32Gbps data streams are generated, transmitted, and received by bulletproof Xilinx UltraScale+ GTY transceivers operating reliably at a theoretical PCIe Gen5’s 32Gbps/lane data rate despite 35dB of loss through the demo system.
Here’s a 1-minute video of the demo:
