PLX introduces PCI Express switch
By Jeff Berman, News Editor -- EDN, July 7, 2005
Standard-I/O silicon vendor PLX Technology has introduced a 24-lane, 6-port PCI Express switch, which is currently sampling.
The PEX 8524 is the most versatile PCI Express switch in the market and offers the highest port count for a switch of its lane count, the company stated. The device comes in a 35×35-mm, 680-pin PBGA (plastic ball grid array) package and typically draws 4W, according to Abker Kazmi, PLX's senior product marketing manager.
Kazmi told EDN in an e-mail that the PEX 8524 is standards compliant, meeting the PCI Express r1.0a base specification. The switch features a non-blocking switch fabric and full-line-rate performance, he added.
The switch offers a configurable, nontransparent port for multihost, intelligent I/O support. Its six ports are flexibly configured and can support mapping for up to eight traffic classes on two virtual channels for each port.
This is significant because in the communications and storage space, a designer can take a ×8 port from a processor, such as a PowerPC or MIPS device, and fan out several ×4 ports for dual Gigabit Ethernet or dual Fibre Channel chips on an adapter card or main board, Kazmi said.
The PEX 8524 is sampling now and priced at under $40.00 in volume quantities.
.
