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What does a series capacitor on a PCIe signal trace do, and how does it work? I've read that a series capacitor smooths out ripple in a power line, but this is a signal trace, and I'd like to know what its purpose is.

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Daniel
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Johonn
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  • There is confusion in your question. Show the circuit that you refer to. – Andy aka Feb 10 '17 at 16:54
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    Inline generally means a series connection on the signal path do you means this or connected from the trace to ground? – RoyC Feb 10 '17 at 16:54
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    It is required by the specification. I *think* that it helps in reducing DC offset problems, but I'm not sure about that. It's just required. – Daniel Feb 10 '17 at 16:55
  • @Johonn Depends on the driver, transmission line, signal ect – Voltage Spike Feb 10 '17 at 18:02
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    Related: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/20718/ac-coupling-on-pcie-layout – Dampmaskin Feb 10 '17 at 18:28
  • @RoyC: yes I mean series, I've edited my question to that effect. – Johonn Feb 10 '17 at 19:02
  • @Andy: I've added the circuit in question. The left hand side goes out to the PCIe connector; the right hand side is the ASIC. – Johonn Feb 10 '17 at 19:02
  • That doesn't constitute anything approaching a circuit. It has little meaning. – Andy aka Feb 10 '17 at 19:13
  • @Andyaka There's not really any more of it to show. There's a chip on one end, a PCIe edge connector on the other, and some capacitors in the middle. Short of showing all the internals of the PCIe endpoint, I'm not sure what you expect to see. –  Feb 10 '17 at 19:19
  • So, look up the data sheet for the chip and see what it recommends for circuits attached to it but I'm voting to close this question based on it being unclear ie there isn't enough info to makea real judgement. – Andy aka Feb 10 '17 at 20:08
  • I was also wondering if someone could actually explain how it works electrically, but I guess that portion of my question got edited out. – Johonn Feb 12 '17 at 04:39
  • @Johonn I edited the question to be specifically about PCIe since that seemed to be what you were interested in. If you want to know how capacitors work, there are other questions that deal with this more specifically: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18301/how-does-a-capacitor-block-dc – Daniel Feb 13 '17 at 03:11

1 Answers1

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PCI Express Electrical Interconnect Design from Intel Press (2004),

p19

The PCI Express Base Specification (PCI-SIG 2004a) requires each lane of a link to be AC-coupled between its corresponding transmitter and receiver. The AC coupling capacitance is required either within the transmitter component or along the link on the printed circuit board. In most scenarios, it is expected that the AC coupling will be located external to the transmitter or receiver device components in the form of discrete capacitors. Each transmitting device's data sheet is required to inform the system designer whether or not the AC capacitors are required external to the TX component.

p29

AC and DC Performance

In addition to the eye jitter and loss performance, you should be aware of some other AC and DC performance requirements. As shown in Figure 1.23, DC blocking capacitors on the transmitter end of the lane provides the PCI Express AC coupling on each signal trace. AC coupling means that any DC voltage at the output of the transmitter is blocked from the receiver, allowing the receiver and the driver to be biased at separate voltage. The capacitors are associated with the transmitting device. If the topology includes an add-in card, the capacitors are located on the substrate with the transmitter.

The PCI Express specification allows the transmitter common mode voltage to be non-zero, but required the receiver's DC common mode voltage to be 0V. The DC blocking capacitors provide another benefit: the transmitter can use RC time constants to detect the presence of a receiver at the end of a lane, and to detect an insertion or removal of a receiver.

p55

AC Coupling Capacitance

AC coupling isolates the driver and receiver's grounds from each other. AC coupling capacitance is important for chassis-to-chassis connectivity, and it must be implemented between the PCI Express driver and receiver. In the role of DC isolation devices, the coupling capacitors must pass the complete spectrum of signaling from its low-pass cutoff point to approximately 3x its highest fundamental. For 2.5 GT/s, the 3x frequency is approximately 5.0 GHz. The PCI Express Base Specification stipulates a capacitance of 200 nF to ensure that the low-frequency components of the 8b/10b signaling can pass through the capacitor undistorted.

So this explains that it is

  • Required by the specification
  • Always associated with the transmitter side
  • Used to isolate transmitter and receiver DC bias
  • Used to detect hot-swap/plug/unplug events
  • Useful for factoring out differences in ground voltage between plug-in cards
  • Sized so that it does not alter the signal in any way besides blocking DC
Daniel
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  • Thanks. I guess once I knew it was in the spec I could have looked it up, thanks for taking the time. :) – Johonn Feb 10 '17 at 20:22
  • Pro-tip: 0402 sized caps is as big as you should go for PCIe blocking caps. I forgot where I picked that up, but if you look you can find papers that talk about the SMT pad size and its effect as an impedance discontinuity. – Daniel Feb 10 '17 at 20:25