CDR vs Retimer: The Core vs System in High-Speed Interconnects

CDR (Clock and Data Recovery) extracts clock from noisy signals but doesn't fix jitter. Retimer includes CDR plus DFE and retransmission, fully regenerating clean signals with jitter reset. At 112G/224G PAM4, Retimer becomes essential for long-distance, low-BER links in AI clusters and PCIe/CXL systems.