Edge connectors scale up PCI Express links

A new family of 1.0mm pitch vertical card edge connectors enables accurate scaling of peripheral bus interconnections, supporting up to 16 serial PCI Express links.

Supporting between one and 16 serial PCI Express links, a new family of 1.0mm pitch vertical card edge connectors from FCI enables accurate scaling of peripheral bus interconnections to match the bandwidth requirements of desktop, server and heavy graphics applications.

The basic bandwidth (x1) edge connector has 36 pins and supports a single transmit/receive PCI Express link.

A direct replacement for standard PCI connectors, it supports the link's fundamental serial data rate of 2.5Gbit/s.

PCI Express is able to further scale link transmission speeds by adding signal pairs to form multiple lanes.

With 64 and 98 pins, respectively, the x4 and x8 connectors therefore cover all current server attach requirements and implementation of 10Gbit storage, networking and clustering applications.

Providing up to 16 PCI Express links, the 164-pin connector is the highest speed version and offers workstations twice the bandwidth of an AGP.

Each connector size is available in reflow/lead-free and wave solder process versions and has a solder tail length suiting 2.36mm motherboard thickness.

For easy wave soldering, the connector's through-hole solder tails are offset to form four rows on a 2mm pitch.

Optional metal board locks provide connector/motherboard retention prior to soldering.

Alternatively, the option of slip-fit plastic orientation posts simplifies the alignment of connector leads with PCB holes during placement.

All FCI's PCI Express edge connectors feature a moulded polarisation key to prevent illegal insertion of addin cards.

A raised ridge at the top of the connector enables a card-mounted retention clip to be firmly latched over.

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