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This paper covers a novel technique for quickly determining optimum settings for pre-emphasis parameters used in high speed SerDes links. Time domain de-convolution is used for determining the optimum pre-emphasis settings for the high speed differential channel. The optimization is done in the frequency domain through FFT and method of exhaustion. The results from the analysis are applied on 10Gbps SerDes links of a top-of-rack Ethernet switch. Measurement results from a vector network analyzer and oscilloscope are shown as part of the verification. This paper is especially useful for optimizing the SerDes channels and it helps the engineers tune the transmitter preemphasis without heavily depending on AMI models, and can be treated as a complementary method to the conventional simulation techniques using IBIS models. The proposed method can be applied at the early and troubleshooting stage of the high speed link design. Introduction25Gbps and 40Gbps links in the networking industry are common and moving towards the 100Gbps standard. The challenge that signal integrity and hardware engineers face is to make sure that the channel can function properly with low bit-error-rate (BER). Such chip-to-chip links could include differential transmission lines, vias, electronic packages and active parts: pre-emphasis and equalization. Besides designing the PCB stackup and over-viewing PCB layout, one of the tasks is to define the pre-emphasis settings/parameters for the channel. At the receiver of the channel, the equalization (DFE) is mostly carried out automatically. At the same time, pre-emphasis setting and tuning remains a manual task for the hardware and SI engineers. It is true that clause 73 in IEEE 802.3ap standard defines a mechanism so that autonegotiation can be made between transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) and, in theory, pre-emphasis settings could be found automatically. However, according to author's experience, the negotiation may not always reach a balance, such that equalization at TX and RX share the load equally. In other words, RX may over stress itself, while pre-emphasis at TX is too relaxed. The commercial software solves this problem by running statistical as well as time domain simulation to mimic the performance of the system, which is composed of IBIS AMI and channel models. With this approach, engineers may become heavily dependent on the simulation tool and lose the insight of the system.An approach is proposed in this paper such that optimized pre-emphasis settings at the TX could be found by the following steps that could be conveniently implemented in Matlab [3], and it does not require the usage of IBIS AMI models. The insight gained from such practice can be accumulated among successive generations of the products,