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Product category: Communications ICs (Wired)
News Release from: PLX Technology Europe | Subject: Gen 2 switches
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 19 September 2007

PCIe switches promise
top power per watt

New-generation PCI Express switches feature twice the interconnection bitrate of existing devices

PLX Technology has built on its industry-leading Gen 1 portfolio by delivering the broadest Gen 2 switch family to market. These Gen 2 switches now bring to 26 the number of PLX PCIe products available, the majority of which are in full production today with over one million chips shipped. PLX's comprehensive portfolio of PCIe interconnect devices addresses the rapidly expanding PCIe market with devices that offer the highest performance per watt and unmatched feature set.

The new ExpressLane PCIe Gen 2 switches include the PEX 8648 (48 lanes, 12 ports), PEX 8632 (32 lanes, 12 ports), PEX 8624 (24 lanes, six ports), PEX 8616 (16 lanes, four ports) and PEX 8612 (12 lanes, three ports).

These Gen 2 switches share a field-tested and proven PLX architecture with industry-leading features including the lowest latency and power, highest performance, integrated nontransparent ports and hot-plug controllers, the smallest flip-chip packaging, and highly flexible port configurations up to x16 - all elements that feed the requirements of next-generation graphics, backplanes, server, storage, HBA/NIC and embedded markets.

PLX's PCI Express Gen 2 switches are fully compliant with the PCI-SIG PCIe base specification 2.0, which doubles the interconnect bitrate over its predecessor, to 5Gtransfer/s, and are backward compatible with Gen 1 thus allowing ease of migration with existing designs.

Integrated nontransparency enables PCIe use in multi-host, host-failover/redundant systems and intelligent I/O modules.

Unique power-reduction methods and a proprietary cut-through design for low latency down to 140ns are achieved through the company's signature engineering features achieved with PLX's third-generation PCIe architecture.

A new technical white paper discussing the important role of low-latency components in designing high-performance PCIe systems can be found on the PLX website.

PLX's new switches complement 5Gtransfer/s speed with patent pending exclusive features such as read pacing, dual cast and dynamic credit allocation to improve system performance.

A typical application of dual cast is Fibre Channel host-bus adapter (HBA) storage: whereas the PLX switch uses dual cast to simultaneously store data on two RAID controllers, the same card can be used for nonredundant applications.

Read pacing allows desired distribution of system bandwidth in host-centric applications, providing greater throughput in data transfers from host memory.

PLX housed its Gen 2 switches in the market's smallest footprint flip-chip packaging (19 x 19mm) to provide superior signal integrity while designing the ball placement for easy board layout.

Additional PLX advantages include several on-chip debug features, the ability to do error injection, and performance monitoring counters which are all valuable in validating Gen 2 at the systems level.

'This launch of PCI Express Gen 2 switches reflects PLX's ongoing commitment to market awareness, innovation and meeting the industry's demands for advanced interconnect solutions', says David Raun, PLX Vice President of Marketing and Business Development.

'PLX's considerable technical and business achievements in the rapidly expanding PCI Express market have allowed us to maintain our long-held leadership as we grow and penetrate new markets'.

PLX's 26 PCI Express switches and bridges provide board and system designers with the most extensive and proven lineup of products to address their wide variety of requirements.

The company's PCIe switches range in density from three to 12 ports and from five to 48 lanes, while the PCIe bridges provide PCI, PCI-X and local-bus support.

The PLX value-added portfolio includes the highest performance per watt, latency as low as 110ns, and integrated nontransparency (NT) and Hot-Plug functionality to help reduce customer's bill of material costs.

Volume quantity pricing ranges from US $25 for the lower 12-lane-count PEX 8612 to $75 for the higher 48-lane-count PEX 8648.

The five new switches will be progressively sampling during the fourth quarter of 2007, with full production in Q1 2008.

All PLX PCI Express products are fully supported with a best-in-class Rapid Development Kit (RDK) family of hardware and software tools to accelerate design cycles.

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