Glossary
Technology evolves at a rapid-fire pace. That’s why we’ve built an easy-to-use glossary to help you better understand the terms, technologies and trends that impact your business.SerDes
What is SerDes?
SerDes, short for serializer/deserializer, is a high-speed interface technology that converts parallel data into a serial data stream for transmission and converts it back to parallel data at the receiving end.
SerDes interfaces are widely used inside network equipment, switches and optical transceivers to move large amounts of data over a limited number of electrical lanes. As Ethernet speeds increase, SerDes lane rates also increase, from 112G-class signaling used in many 800G designs to 224G-class signaling for emerging 1.6T interfaces.
Why is SerDes important?
SerDes performance has a direct impact on the reliability of high-speed electrical interfaces. At higher lane rates, insertion loss, noise, reflections and intersymbol interference can reduce signal margins and make reliable transmission more difficult.
Testing SerDes interfaces helps engineers characterize signal integrity, BER, equalization and other performance parameters when validating high-speed components, transceivers and systems.
Learn more
- BA-1600 – 1.6T Bit Analyzer
- EXFO showcases industry’s first lab-to-fabrication 1.6T test solution
- EXFO glossary: 1.6T Ethernet
- EXFO glossary: PAM4