Bridge chip brings PCIe to embedded designs

The PEX 8311 is the industry's only bridging device dedicated to upgrading standard processor, DSP and FPGA bus interface designs to PCIe.

PLX Technology has announced the PEX 8311, the industry's only bridging device dedicated to upgrading standard processor, DSP and FPGA bus interface designs to PCIe.

The newest member of the PLX ExpressLane family of PCIe switches and bridges, the feature-rich PEX 8311 provides the power and flexibility of PCIe to embedded designs spanning the video, imaging, communications, and industrial-control markets.

The PEX 8311 provides an efficient conversion between a parallel, low-overhead local bus and the serial, packet-based PCIe interconnect, allowing users to add a scalable, high-bandwidth interconnect to a wide variety of root complex- or endpoint-based applications.

These applications include: video systems, such as surveillance cameras and security products that take advantage of the PEX 8311's PCIe flexible connectivity; communications systems enabled by the bridge's high-throughput efficiency; and industrial-control and medical-imaging systems using the PEX 8311's full-featured dual DMA channels.

The PEX 8311's direct-memory-access (DMA) capability improves the performance of these applications; the DMA offloads from the host CPU the burdensome computational tasks required for transferring data between the PCIe port and the CPU-independent local bus standard used in many processor, DSP and FPGA designs.

Such local bus designs allow glueless data connections between these devices and the PEX 8311.

"With the PEX 8311, PLX is empowering designers to quickly enter the PCI Express market with an economical solution to adapt existing designs to this rapidly growing interconnect technology, while simplifying the process of blending it with the wide range of FPGAs, DSPs and CPUs designers are now using", said John Gudmundson, Senior Product Marketing Manager at PLX.

"This market is especially attractive to designers and manufacturers at a time when industry experts predict PCI Express designs will grow to hundreds of millions of units in coming years".

The PEX 8311 provides a cost-effective, off-the-shelf alternative to programmable solutions; using the device to bridge between PCIe and a local bus can save up to 50% of the cost of programmable solutions, with no IP expenses or added design time.

Additionally, the PEX 8311 delivers features not found in IP for programmable devices, such as two independent data-transfer channels for simultaneous bidirectional traffic, simultaneous direct master and direct slave modes, four general-purpose I/Os to program/control other system ICs, a read-ahead mode and zero-wait-state bursts for high throughput, and integrated serdes physical-layer (PHY) interfaces that eliminate the need for a separate PHY device.

The PEX 8311 provides a complete local-bus-to-PCIe interface, including address translation, packet generation and decode, Message Signaled Interrupt support, and parallel to serial conversion.

It feat.

ures a 66MHz local bus that can be configured in 8, 16 or 32bit widths.

Additionally, the bridge features one PCIe lane with a bidirectional bandwidth of 2.5Gbit/s.

The hot plug-compatible PEX 8311 features 3.3 and 5V-tolerant I/Os, and its PCIe port is PCI Express Base Specification R1.0a-compliant.

The PEX 8311 is register-compatible with the PLX PCI 9xxx series of PCI-to-local-bus bridges, enabling designers to quickly upgrade to PCIe technology existing designs based on the widely used PCI 9xxx platform.

The PEX 8311 also is fully interoperable with PLX's other ExpressLane devices.

This assures designers that the bridge will operate in systems also using such ExpressLane devices as the PEX 8111 and PEX 8114 bridges, and PEX 8508, PEX 8518, PEX 8524 and PEX 8532 switches.

The PEX 8311, as with all members of the ExpressLane family, features software compatibility with designs based on conventional PCI, enabling designers to leverage the investment they've already made in software.

The bridge is also supported by PLX's rapid development kit (RDK) line of tools; the PEX 8311RDK includes a proven, working hardware platform incorporating the PEX 8311, a complete set of board schematics, symbols, and layout files for hardware design.

The kit also features an extensive software development kit that includes a graphical utility for access to chip registers, sample drivers and a support library for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems.

This PCI software compatibility and the PEX 8311RDK combine to help lower overall development costs and considerably improve manufacturers' time to market with new and migrated designs.

The introduction of the PEX 8311 further extends PLX's leadership in PCIe technology, a position reflected in its role as the supplier of the industry's broadest array of.

PCIe switches and bridges.

Unlike vendors of PCIe devices with limited flexibility, PLX offers an array of PCIe switches and bridges that enable board and system manufacturers to choose the devices that meet their specific system requirements.

Four ExpressLane PCIe switches and bridges are in production and several other devices have been in general sampling.

Manufacturers worldwide are designing these devices into graphics, server, storage, industrial control, and communications applications.

The PEX 8311 comes in a 337-pin plastic BGA package, and initial samples are available now, with production expected in March 2006.

Available in a lead-free package, the bridge is priced at under $25 in volume quantities.

The PEX 8311RDK is available now and is priced at $495.

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