OIF publishes Common Electrical I/O (CEI) 5.0 Implementation Agreement for 112G interconnects

June 9, 2022
The IA specifies transmitter, receiver, and channel requirements for Extra Short Reach (XSR), Medium Reach (MR), and Long Reach (LR) interfaces for multi-chip-module, chip-to-chip, and high-speed backplane applications.

OIF has published the Implementation Agreement (IA) for Common Electrical I/O (CEI) 5.0 focused on 112-Gbps electrical interconnects. The IA specifies transmitter, receiver, and channel requirements for Extra Short Reach (XSR), Medium Reach (MR), and Long Reach (LR) interfaces for multi-chip-module, chip-to-chip, and high-speed backplane applications.

“This IA marks a new generation of specifications for 112G interfaces,” said Klaus-Holger Otto of Nokia, who is OIF Technical Committee chair. “It is a continuation of OIF’s proud history of adding next-generation data rates that enable broad interconnect solutions and are critical building blocks for several industry standards and platforms.”

“These new data-rate specifications will enable applications including backplane, chip-to-chip, and die-to-die interfaces within a package,” added David Stauffer of Kandou Bus, chair of OIF’s Physical and Link Layer (PLL) Working Group. “And it enables multiple applications, such as co-packaged optics. Definitions of interfaces within co-packaged die are unique to this IA and OIF’s work.”

CEI 5.0 follows on from CEI 4.0 for 56-Gbps interconnects, which OIF released in 2018 (see “OIF publishes CEI 4.0 for CEI-56G 56-Gbps applications”). The new IA is part of a busy opening six months of 2022 for OIF, which also took control of Common Management Interface Specification (CMIS) development from the QSFP-DD MSA and issued updated CMIS specifications (and started a follow-on project), completed a framework IA for co-packaging, and launched six new projects.

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