In high-speed communication applications , a large amount of data may have to be communicated from one chip to another. Unfortunately, the number of input and output (I/O) pins is limited on a System-on-Chip (SoC). Serializing and deserializing (also called "SerDes") the data using a serial link between the chips at a high speed is the way to achieve high speed data transfers.

The data transfers can happen in short and long distances. The architecture of the design depends not only on the distance, but also on the speed of transfer (frequency of operation). Serial communication is used in machine to machine (M2M) and chip-to-chip (C2C) communications greatly. In fact, each smart phone in our hands has multiple such SerDes in it. In this course we will discuss the overview and the challenges of designing high speed SerDes.