PEX 8604BA-AIC1U1D PLX Technology, PEX 8604BA-AIC1U1D Datasheet - Page 2

• Manufacturer Part Number: PEX 8604BA-AIC1U1D
• Description: Interface Modules & Development Tools RDK (x1 Up/3 x1 Dn) PEX8604 Add-in Card
• Manufacturer: PLX Technology

Flexible Port Configurations
The PEX 8604 flexible architecture supports a number of port
configurations as required by the target applications as shown
in figure 1 below.
Hot-Plug for High Availability
Hot-Plug capability allows users to replace hardware modules
and perform maintenance without powering down the system.
The PEX 8604 Hot-Plug capability feature makes it suitable
for High Availability (HA) applications. If the PEX 8604 is
used in an application where one or more of its downstream
ports connect to PCI Express slots, each port’s Hot-Plug
Controller can be used to manage the Hot-Plug event of its
associated slot. Every port on the PEX 8604 is equipped with
a Hot-Plug control/status register to support Hot-Plug
capability through external logic via the I
Dual Cast
The PEX 8604 supports Dual Cast, a feature which allows for
the copying of data (e.g. packets) from one ingress port to two
egress ports allowing for higher performance in storage,
security, and mirroring applications.
Read Pacing
The Read Pacing feature allows users to throttle the amount of
read requests being made by downstream devices. In the case
where a downstream device requests several long reads back-
to-back, the Root Complex gets tied up in serving this
downstream port. If this port has a narrow link and is therefore
slow in receiving these read packets from the Root Complex,
then other downstream ports may become starved – thus,
impacting performance. The Read Pacing feature enhances
performances by allowing for the adequate servicing of all
downstream devices by intelligent handling of read requests.
SerDes Power and Signal Management
The PEX 8604 provides low power capability that is fully
compliant with the PCI Express power management
specification. In addition, the SerDes physical links can be
turned off when unused for even lower power. The PEX 8604
supports software control of the SerDes outputs to allow
optimization of power and signal strength in a system. The
PLX SerDes implementation supports four levels of power –
Figure 1. Port Configurations
2
C interface
.
off, low, typical, and high. The SerDes block also supports
loop-back modes and advanced reporting of error
conditions, which enables efficient debug and management of
the entire system.
Port and Virtual Channel (VC) Arbitration
The PEX 8604 switch supports hardware fixed and Weighted
Round-Robin Ingress Port Arbitration. This allows fine tuning
of Quality of Service and efficient use of packet buffers for
better system performance. The PEX 8604 also supports WRR
VC arbitration scheme between the two virtual channels.
Applications
Suitable for fan-out, control plane applications, embedded
systems as well as intelligent I/O applications, PEX 8604
can be configured for a wide variety of form factors and
applications.
Fan-Out
The PEX 8604 switch, with its flexible configurations, allows
user specific tuning to a variety of host-centric as well as
peer-to-peer applications.
Figure 2 shows a typical fan-out design, where the processor
provides a PCI Express link that needs to be fanned into a
larger number of smaller ports for a variety of I/O functions,
each with different bandwidth requirements.
In this example, the PEX 8604 would typically have a 1-lane
upstream port, and three downstream ports. The downstream
ports provide x1 PCI Express connectivity to the endpoints.
With its four ports, the PEX 8604 can provide fan-out
connectivity to up to three PCI Express devices. The figure
also shows how some of the ports can be bridged to provide
PCI slots through the use of the PEX 8112 PCIe bridging
devices.
Consumer Applications
With its small footprint, the PEX 8604 is ideal for consumer
applications. Figure 3 shows an example for a set top box.
The PEX8604 connects to legacy devices using a PEX85112
Figure 2. Fan-in/out Usage