AN1027 - Using High-Speed Serial Links to Supplement Parallel Data Bus

Introduction

The designers face a multitude of problems when trying to move data within their systems. These problems range from overtaxed parallel-bus bandwidth to a lack of pins at the card edge connector. Even routing parallel buses around today’s dense circuit boards is very difficult. This application note discusses using high-performance serial links as a solution to some of these bottlenecks. A serial approach provides three immediate benefits: first, bandwidth may be off-loaded from the backplane bus; second, connector pins are saved; and, third, circuit board routing is made much easier since only one or two traces have to be routed for the data path (versus one for each data bus bit plus a separate clock).