The AD8153 is an asynchronous, protocol agnostic, single-lane 2:1 switch with three differential CML inputs and three differential CML outputs. The AD8159, another member of the Xstream line of products, is suitable for similar applications that require more than one lane.

The AD8153 is optimized for NRZ signaling with data rates of up to 3.2 Gbps per port. Each port offers two levels of input equalization and four levels of output pre-emphasis.

The device consists of a 2:1 multiplexer and a 1:2 demultiplexer. There are three operating modes: pin mode, serial mode, and mixed mode. In pin mode, lane switching, equalization, and pre-emphasis are controlled exclusively using external pins. In serial mode, an I2C interface is used to control the device and to provide access to advanced features, such as additional pre-emphasis settings and output disable. In mixed mode, the user accesses the advanced features using I2C, but controls lane switching using the external pins.

The main application of the AD8153 is to support redundancy on both the backplane side and the line interface side of a serial link. The device has unicast and bicast capability, so it is capable of supporting either 1 + 1 or 1:1 redundancy.

Using a mixture of bicast and loopback modes, the AD8153 can also be used to test high speed serial links by duplicating the incoming data and transmitting it to the destination port and test equipment simultaneously.