Stratix development kit focuses on PCI Express

Altera Corp. launched a development kit for the new 40-nm Stratix IV GX this week, with a decided focus on PCI Express Gen 2 interfaces. This is not merely a reflection of the popularity of PCIe in the data center, but a result of the FPGA’s integrated 8.5-Gbit/sec transceivers making this particular Stratix a vehicle for testing high-speed serial interfaces.

Keep in mind, this particular development kit does not just rely on PCIe interfaces on the board-level product. The resident FPGAs include PCIe Gen 2 hard intellectual property cores. Altera also has bundled Jungo’s PCIe WinDriver tool with the kit, and offers designers downloadable reference designs.

I’m glad to see that Altera mentioned the availability of alternative protocols via mezzanine cards offered from partners, allowing links to 10-Gbit Ethernet, SAS/SATA, Serial RapidIO, etc. Here’s two axioms of the data center interface market as we move beyond 8-Gbit/sec Fibre Channel: Yes, PCIe will dominate data center applications, and will be a critical part of network infrastructure in the future. But what once was anticipated to be a pure 10-, 40-, and 100-Gbit Ethernet market of the future will turn out to be a protocol free-for-all, with multiple serial standards and growing use of optical parallel standards in the data center and home – and who could have dreamed that multi-lane Infiniband scaling to HDMI would prove to be a contender? In short, Altera’s strategy of keeping Stratix PCIe-centric is sound, provided the alternate-protocol mezzanine cards keep rolling!