Xilinx serdes example

1. What is SerDes in Xilinx?
2. How does a high speed SerDes work?

What is SerDes in Xilinx?

A SerDes is an integrated circuit or device used in high-speed communications that converts between serial data and parallel interfaces, in either direction.

How does a high speed SerDes work?

In essence, a SerDes is a serial transceiver which converts parallel data into a serial data stream on the transmitter side and converts the serial data back to parallel on the receiver side. The timing skew problem encountered in a parallel bus is solved by embedding the clock signal into the data stream.