Flexible & Versatile PCI Express Switch

Features

PEX 8516 General Features

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16-lane PCI Express switch

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Integrated SerDes

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Up to four configurable ports

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27mmx27mm, 312 pin PBGA package

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Maximum Power: 4.36 Watts

PEX 8516 Key Features

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Standards Compliant

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PCI Express Base Specification, r1.0a

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PCI SHPC Specification, r1.0

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High Performance

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Non-blocking switch fabric

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Full line rate on all ports

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Non-Transparent Bridging

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Configurable Non-Transparent port

for Multi-Host or Intelligent I/O

Support

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Flexible Configuration

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Four highly flexible & configurable

ports (x1, x2, x4, or x8)

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Configurable with strapping pins,

EEPROM, or Host software

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Lane and polarity reversal

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PCI Express Power Management

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Link power management states: L0,

L0s, L1, L2/L3 Ready, and L3

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Device states: D0 and D3hot

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Quality of Service (QoS)

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Two Virtual Channels per port

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Eight Traffic Classes per port

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Fixed and Round-Robin Virtual

Channel Port Arbitration

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Reliability, Availability,

Serviceability

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4 Standard Hot-Plug Controllers

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Upstream port as hot-plug client

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Transaction Layer end-to-end CRC

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Poison bit

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Advanced Error Reporting in addition

to PCIe baseline error reporting

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Lane Status bits and GPO available

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Per port performance monitoring

• Average packet size

• Number of packets

• CRC errors and more

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JTAG boundary scan

Multi-purpose, Feature Rich ExpressLane™ PCI Express Switch

The ExpressLane PEX 8516 device offers PCI Express switching

capability enabling users to add scalable high bandwidth, non-blocking

interconnection to a wide variety of applications including servers,

storage systems, communications platforms, blade servers, and

embedded-control products. The PEX 8516 is well suited for fan-out,

aggregation, peer-to-peer, and intelligent I/O module applications.

Highly Flexible Port Configurations

The ExpressLane PEX 8516 offers highly configurable ports. There are a maximum

of 4 ports that can be configured to any legal width from x1 to x8, in any

combination to support your specific bandwidth needs. The ports can be symmetric

(each port having the same lane width) or asymmetric (ports having different lane

widths). Any of the ports can be designated as the upstream port, which can be

changed dynamically.

End-to-end Packet Integrity

The ExpressLane PEX 8516 provides end-to-end CRC protection (ECRC) and

Poison bit support to enable designs that require guaranteed error-free packets.

These features are optional in the PCI Express specification, but PLX provides them

across its entire ExpressLane switch product line.

Non-Transparent “Bridging” in a PCI Express Switch

The ExpressLane PEX 8516 product supports full non-transparent bridging (NTB)

functionality to allow implementation of multi-host systems and intelligent I/O

modules in applications such as communications, storage, and blade servers. To

ensure quick product migration, the non-transparency features are implemented in

the same fashion as in standard PCI applications.

Non-transparent bridges allow systems to isolate memory domains by presenting the

processor subsystem as an endpoint, rather than another memory system. Base

address registers are used to translate addresses; doorbell registers are used to send

interrupts between the address domains; and scratchpad registers are accessible from

both address domains to allow inter-processor communication.

Two Virtual Channels

The ExpressLane PEX 8516 switch supports 2 full-featured Virtual Channels (VCs)

and a full 8 Traffic Classes (TCs). The mapping of Traffic Classes to port-specific

Virtual Channels allows for different mappings for different ports. In addition, the

devices offer user-selectable Virtual Channel arbitration algorithms to enable users

to fine tune the Quality of Service (QoS) required for a specific application.

Low Power with Granular SerDes Control

The ExpressLane PEX 8516 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.

PEX 8516

Version 1.4 2006