Ah it’s been a long time coming, but as many of you know, last week’s PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop #110 was the first official testing for PCI Express 4.0 compliance testing. I’m super-excited to be able to say that Synopsys had *BOTH* Endpoint and Root Complex devices pass the testing with our 16GT/s PHY IP in several different silicon processes! (Ok, ok, you can probably already guess that some of those PHYs are capable of even higher speeds, but since we’re talking just about PCIe 4.0 compliance today I won’t go into that…) Within the next few weeks, you’ll finally be able to see “PCIe 4.0 Compliant” devices on the PCI-SIG Integrator’s List, and there will be a goodly number of Synopsys entries!
“…by the dawn’s early light..”
Richard has been talking about how long it’s been since he’s posted. I have to say, it’s been forever since I’ve posted a blog and I’ll need to work on that in 2019. Yes, I’m still alive and kicking and so much has happened since I’ve posted. More on that in another post.
No, no, “it” does NOT refer to “get Richard back on the blog after some 4 months of silence” – although I think Scott was starting to think that and was probably considering threats of bodily harm!
I’m afraid that I’m showing my age again with this title, and in truth time has shown that video did *NOT* kill off radio/audio-only media. In much the same way, I believe that nothing takes the place of an in-person presentation. Even when an audience is not asking questions, I find that there’s a connection between them and the speaker which is different for every occasion – even if the underlying material doesn’t change.
Whew, what a week! That’s another PCI-SIG Developers Conference in the books though.
You’re probably thinking “Wait a minute Richard, it’s not May anymore!” which is why I titled this “May 32nd…”
PCI-SIG Board Election Time that is – please vote before Tuesday at noon Pacific!
Well things are about to get busier – though given I got off a plane Thursday night from the PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop #105 and got on another one less than 12 hours later to go to a family wedding… Perhaps my definition of “busy” is a bit suspect!
I wanted to title this “Upstream, downstream, in my lady’s chamber” in honor of the old nursery rhyme “Goosey, goosey, gander” – but after reading what Wikipedia has to say about the nursery rhyme it didn’t seem quite as childlike as I remembered… I also thought that putting “in my lady’s chamber” in a blog title was perhaps not going to show up on the kinds of google searches I’d actually hope for! I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.
Richard Solomon
I’ve been involved in the development of PCI chips dating back to the NCR 53C810 and pre-1.0 versions of the PCI spec so have definitely lived the evolution of PCI Express and PCI since the very beginning! Over the years I have worked on variations of PCI, eventually moving on to architecting and leading the development of the PCI Express and PCI-X interface cores used in LSI’s line of storage RAID controller chips. For the last ten plus years I've also had the honor of serving on the PCI-SIG Board of Directors and holding a variety of officer positions. I am still involved in PCI-SIG workgroups and I present at many PCI-SIG events around the world. Back before the dawn of PCI, I received my B.S.E.E. from Rice University, and hold over two dozen U.S. Patents, many of which relate to PCI technology.