Local bus-to-PCIe bridge passes compliance test

The PLX ExpressLane PEX 8311 generic local bus-to-PCIe bridge has been released to production and has been added to the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) Integrators List.

The PLX ExpressLane PEX 8311 generic local bus-to-PCIe bridge has been released to production and has been added to the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) Integrators List.

The combination of these developments gives board and system manufacturers assurance that their new and upgraded products can be designed around proven, readily available PCIe bridging technology that the PEX 8311 delivers.

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

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

The PEX 8311 joins an array of other ExpressLane devices already on the Integrators List: the PEX 8508, PEX 8516, PEX 8518 and PEX 8532 PCIe switches; and the PEX 8111 PCIe-to-PCI and PEX 8114 PCIe-to-PCI-X bridges.

The PCI-SIG is the special interest group managing the PCI and PCIe specifications as open industry standards.

The Integrators List includes all products that have successfully completed testing the PCI-SIG's Compliance Workshop.

At the recent workshop, the PEX 8311 passed all of the PCI-SIG's extensive compliance and interoperability tests to earn a place on the Integrators List.

"Since its introduction in late 2005, the PEX 8311 has provided manufacturers a path to quickly and economically upgrade their existing designs to the powerful PCI Express architecture", said Krishna Mallampati, PLX Senior Product Marketing Manager.

"The PEX 8311's place on the PCI-SIG Integrators list and its being production released allow those manufacturers to feel fully confident in the device's reliability, interoperability and availability".

The production release of the PEX 8311 reflects PLX's expanding role as the leader in PCIe bridging and switching technology.

With an industry-leading six PCIe switches and bridges now in production, PLX supplies the broadest array of PCIe interconnect solutions available.

Additionally, the configuration flexibility of the PEX 8311 and other ExpressLane switches and bridges allows them to be applied to the widest range of boards and systems.

PLX designed the ExpressLane family to meet both the stringent requirements of customers and rigorous compliance testing of the PCI-SIG.

During the development phase, PLX verification and validation teams created a superset of the PCI-SIG compliance suites and put the devices through these tests during simulation, emulation and silicon testing.

In addition to this testing of the silicon before participating in the compliance testing, PLX performed interoperability tests in its own labs with products from various vendors.

The PEX 8311 passed the PCI-SIG's compliance testing the first time.

The PCI-SIG hosts its compliance workshops up to six times per year, presenting an environment for members to test and validate their products before they reach market.

Testing is completed in systems approved by the PCI-SIG, as well as those from other leading manufacturers of products based on PCI-SIG technologies.

As part of the PCI-SIG compliance programme, each workshop participant must pass several tests in order to be placed on the Integrators List.

This helps assure designers that they can integrate the ExpressLane devices with other PCIe technology-compliant components and systems.

It also broadens the system-interconnect ecosystem needed for the deployment of the PCIe architecture in mainstream and mission-critical applications.

Back to top