Get Ready for PCIe 6.0 Base Tx Testing--Compliance, Jitter and Eye Diagrams

Figure 1. The four levels and three eyes of the
PCIe 6.0 PAM4 signal.
Click on any image to enlarge.

The PCI Express® 6.0 Base specification was officially released in January 2022 at version 1.0, meaning it is considered final. The CEM and PHY test specifications are currently at version 0.3, and 0.5 versions of both will probably be released sometime in the third or fourth quarter of 2022. As both the CEM and PHY test specifications are still at an early stage, it's hard to predict exactly when the PCIe® 6.0 compliance test program will start, but it's safe to say it is at least a few years out. However, PCIe 6.0 Base testing is upon us, especially those of us working on chip design.

So, what can implementers expect as they retool for PCIe 6.0 Base Tx and Base Rx physical layer testing?