EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Tackling PCI Express and Ethernet Increasing Bandwidth Demands

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Market trends are constantly moving toward faster, more powerful computing resources.
PCIe standards improve performance over previous generations, but are backward compatible.
3M Twin Axial Cable solutions reduce cost and loss.
Application demand for higher-bandwidth communication drives high-speed Ethernet adoption.
3M Twin Axial External Assemblies offer space-saving benefits without compromising performance.

The evolution of technology, such as the emergence of 5G cellular, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and next-generation applications, is placing intensive bandwidth demands on connectivity and communications infrastructure. PCI Express (PCIe) and Ethernet are two major connectivity technologies that share many problems and solutions to handle increasing bandwidth speed and performance requirements.

3M and TTI have developed cabling and connector solutions to address some of these challenges. The 3M™ Twin Axial high-speed Cable Assemblies provide reliable interconnect solutions for internal and external cabling requirements. The thin, highly flexible cabling supports connectivity where density/space is a premium without sacrificing performance.

Tackling PCI Express and Ethernet Increasing Bandwidth Demands

Technology keeps evolving and growing at unprecedented levels. The emergence of 5G cellular, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and driverless cars have pushed/intensified bandwidth demands.

Watch this webinar to learn about how the past, present, and future of ethernet and PCIe standards have and will continue to evolve to meet these changes.

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Speaker

David Foresyth

Global Product Portfolio Manager — 3M Company

David Foresyth is a senior global portfolio manager in the Electronic Materials Solutions Division at 3M Company. His career started as a manufacturing engineer and transitioned to product marketing. In his current role, David is responsible for twin axial cable products for high-speed applications and industrial connector products. He has a B.S. and M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering from Boston University.

Context

The discussion focused on trends in digital infrastructure and connectivity standards guiding hardware development, including details about the 3M™ Twin Axial high-speed cabling solutions that meet current and next-generation connectivity requirements.

Market trends are constantly moving toward faster, more powerful computing resources.

The significant shift to remote work since 2020 has driven the demand for agile computing that scales up or down according to demand. Cloud-hosting providers have developed cloud computing infrastructure to support enterprise data centers, vendor-specific economies of scale, and public, private, or hybrid offerings for enterprises to offload some or all on-premise data center operations to the cloud. Capacity scaling is a key added benefit over traditional on-premise data centers, and specialized providers offer security, cost savings, flexibility, and scalability benefits.

Companies such as 3M are innovating in the digital edge space to enable emerging applications. For example, emerging AI and ML applications are driving increasing demand for data center resources; 51% of enterprises have plans to implement AI, while 25% have already done so. Additionally, because of the constant drive toward smaller, faster, more powerful networks and edge infrastructure, there is significant projected growth rate of service providers and industries driving data center and communications expansion and improvement.

Equinix, Inc. defines the three elements of the digital infrastructure as:

The digital core

The migration from on-premise data centers to cloud-based data centers allows businesses to achieve economies of scale and operational efficiencies, and to better serve customers.

The digital ecosystem

The cloud platform allows enterprises to focus on XaaS (anything “as a service”) to provide revenue-generating services that serve various segments of the industry.

The digital edge

As cloud-based service offerings grow, enterprises are looking to distribute computing away from central data center usage and move computing capability closer to the users in what is referred to as edge computing.

“We see this as, ‘How do we make better decisions with the data we have?’ AI is the tool for that. If we look at the forecast for spend and business value, by 2030, 44% will use AI and machine learning in some capacity. That's a significant use of this technology and tool to develop insights with a tremendous amount of data.”

— David Foresyth, 3M

PCIe standards improve performance over previous generations, but are backward compatible.

Founded in 1992, the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) is an association of over 800 industry companies all working toward the goal of defining a common specification for performance, or the PCI Express I/O bus specifications and related form factors.

Backward-compatible

One of the key features of PCIe standards is that each new generation is backward-compatible with the previous generation, supporting consumer- and industrial-level device interoperability. PCI-SIG works to double the bandwidth of interconnect technology every three years, releasing the specification for industry standards to inform hardware design processes.

Evolution

From the initial standard PCIe 1.0 in the early 2000s that operated on the 3G cellular network, to the recently released PCIe 5.0 and the emerging PCIe 6.0 versions, communication and processing capabilities have evolved to leverage the capabilities of ever-improving networks and data center availability zones. Ethernet speeds have evolved from 100-gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 400 GbE being implemented today, with some early adopters implementing 800 GbE.

Performance

Although PCI-SIG ensures backward compatibility, enterprises should consider performance tradeoffs for older devices. For example, with a PCIe 5.0 peripheral device used in a PCIe 3.0 system, where CPU and bus only support PCIe 3.0, the interface will default to the previous generation’s speed (from 32 Gbps to 8 Gbps) even though the PCIe 5.0 device is compatible with the PCIe 3.0 motherboard.

Driving Faster

Beginning in PCI Generation 6, the use of NRZ (Non-return to Zero) modulation was switched to PAM4 (Pulse Amplitude Modulation) with FEC (Forward Error Correction), enabling faster data transmission and error compensation. As the PCIe standard moves to version 7.0, increasingly data-intensive applications will drive a faster internal network or internal bus requirement and 800 GbE will be required to support the structure of the PCIe 7.0 protocol.

3M™ Twin Axial Cable solutions reduce cost and loss

3M™ Twin Axial External Assemblies, otherwise known as Direct Attach Copper Assemblies (DACs), offer similar functionality and benefits to 3M internal cable assemblies. These 3M™ Twin Axial External assemblies are flat and can be bundled for easy organization in a rack. Bundling and moving the cables to the side also increases the airflow into the server and rack area for more efficient cooling. With no minimum bend radius, the cables can be bent and folded without sacrificing signal integrity performance.

3M™ Twin Axial Cables are flat ribbon and can be precisely mass terminated, which is the stripping of the insulation, bending, forming and soldering it to the PCB, all with uniformity, increasing the efficiency and quality of devices. Other companies’ spiral/longitudinal wrapped shield around individual pairs renders those cables thicker and less flexible, which could lead to Signal Integrity performance degradation in situations with tight bending and folding.

Application demand for higher-bandwidth communication drives high-speed Ethernet adoption.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Gigabytes Per Second

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

The IEEE writes the Ethernet standard for external devices communicating from the server to the switch, and the switch to the network.

Gigabytes Per Second

Similarly to the PCIe market, the majority of the Ethernet market is 100 Gbps, with most 400 Gbps enterprises having opted to move from 100 Gbps directly to 400 Gbps or even 800 Gbps.

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3M™ Twin Axial External Assemblies offer space-saving benefits without compromising performance.

Using 3M™ Twin Axial External Assemblies facilitates routing in dense environments, as it requires less space in front of the port, saving space and improving serviceability.

Additional Resources

Executive Summary

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Webinar Recording

Technology keeps evolving and growing at unprecedented levels. The emergence of 5G cellular, artificial and machine learning, and driverless cars have pushed/intensified bandwidth demands. See how the ethernet and PCIe standards have and will continue to evolve.

High Speed Cable Solutions

High-speed cable assemblies are essential for the efficient operation of systems that process large volumes of data. For high-performance computing, routers, storage and switches, 3M has the cabling solutions to connect devices with the latest industry standard physical interfaces.

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