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Version 1.6 2007
PEX 8517
Recommended only for designs migrating from PEX 8516 - please use PEX 8518 for new designs
Version 1.6 2007
PEX 8517
Features
PEX 8517 General Features o 16-lane PCI Express switch - Integrated SerDes o Up to five configurable ports o 27mm x 27mm, 312-ball PBGA package o Typical Power: 2.6 Watts PEX 8517 Key Features o Standards Compliant - PCI Express Base Specification, r1.1 - Standard SHPC Specification, r1.1 (hot-plug) o High Performance - Non-blocking internal architecture - Full line rate on all ports - Cut-Thru latency: 150ns o Non-Transparent Bridging - Configurable Non-Transparent port for Multi-Host or Intelligent I/O Support o Flexible Configuration - Five highly flexible & configurable ports (x1, x2, x4, or x8) - Configurable with strapping pins, EEPROM, I2C, or Host software - Lane and polarity reversal o PCI Express Power Management - Link power management states: L0, L0s, L1, L2/L3 Ready, L2 and L3 - Device states: D0 and D3hot o Quality of Service (QoS) - Two Virtual Channels per port - Eight Traffic Classes per port - Fixed and Round-Robin Virtual Channel Port Arbitration o Reliability, Availability, Serviceability - 4 Standard Hot-Plug Controllers - Upstream port as hot-plug client - Transaction Layer end-to-end CRC - Poison bit - Advanced Error Reporting - Lane Status bits and GPO available - Per port error diagnostics * Bad DLLPs * Bad TLPs * CRC errors - JTAG boundary scan
Flexible & Versatile PCI Express(R) Switch
Multi-purpose, Feature Rich ExpressLaneTM PCI Express Switch The ExpressLane PEX 8517 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 8517 is well suited for fan-out, aggregation, peer-topeer, and intelligent I/O module applications. Highly Flexible Port Configurations The PEX 8517 offers highly configurable ports. There are a maximum of five 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 configured for symmetric (each port having the same lane width and traffic load) or asymmetric (ports having different lane widths) traffic. In the event of asymmetric traffic, the PEX 8517 features a flexible central packet memory that allocates a memory buffer for each port as required by the application or endpoint. This buffer allocation along with the device's flexible packet flow control minimizes bottlenecks when the upstream and aggregated downstream bandwidths do not match (are asymmetric). Any of the ports can be designated as the upstream port, which can be changed dynamically. End-to-end Packet Integrity The PEX 8517 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 PEX 8517 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 8517 switch supports two full-featured Virtual Channels (VCs) and eight 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 PEX 8517 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.
management states, in compliance with the PCI Express power management specification.
SerDes Power and Signal Management
The ExpressLane PEX 8517 supports software control of the SerDes outputs to allow optimization of power and signal strength in a system. The PLX SerDes implementation supports four levels of power - off, low, typical, and high. The SerDes block also supports loop-back modes and advanced reporting of error conditions, which enables efficient debug and management of the entire system.
Flexible Port Width Configuration
The lane width for each port can be individually configured through auto-negotiation, hardware strapping, upstream software configuration, or through an optional EEPROM. The PEX 8517 supports a large number of port configurations. For example, if you are using the PEX 8517 in a fan-out application, you may configure the upstream port as x8 and the downstream ports as four x2 ports; two x2 & one x4 ports; three x1 ports; or other combinations, as long as you don't exceed the maximum number of lanes and/or ports. In a port aggregation application you can configure three x2 or x1 ports for aggregation into one x8 or x4 port. Figure 1 shows the most common port configurations.
Flexible Virtual Channel Arbitration
The ExpressLane PEX 8517 switch supports hardware fixed and Round Robin arbitration schemes for two virtual channels on each port. This allows for the fine tuning of Quality of Service for efficient use of packet buffers and system bandwidth.
Applications
Suitable for host-centric as well as intelligent I/O applications ExpressLane PEX 8517 can be configured for a wide variety of form factors and applications.
Host-Centric Fan-out
The ExpressLane PEX 8517 switch, with its symmetric or asymmetric lane configuration capability, allows user specific tuning to a variety of host-centric as well as peer-to-peer applications.
Figure 1. Common Port Configurations
Hot-Plug for High Availability
Hot plug capability allows users to replace hardware modules and perform maintenance without powering down the system. The PEX 8517 hot-plug capability and Advanced Error Reporting features makes it suitable for High Availability (HA) applications. Four ports include a Standard Hot-Plug Controller. If the PEX 8517 is used in an application where one or more of its downstream ports connect to PCI Express slots, each port's Hot-Plug Controller can be used to manage the hot-plug event of its associated slot. Furthermore, its upstream port is a hot-plug client, allowing it to be used on hot-pluggable adapter cards, backplanes, and fabric modules. Figure 2. Fan-in/out Usage Figure 2 shows a typical server-based design, where the root complex provides a PCI Express link that needs to be fanned into a larger number of smaller ports for a variety of I/O functions, each with different bandwidth requirements. In this example, the PEX 8517 would typically have an 8-lane upstream port, and as many as three downstream ports. The downstream ports can be of differing widths if required. The figure also shows how some of the ports can be bridged to provide PCI or PCI-X slots through the use of the ExpressLane PEX 8114 and PEX 8111 PCIe bridging devices.
Fully Compliant Power Management
For applications that require power management, the PEX 8517 device supports both link (L0, L0s, L1, L2/L3 Ready, L2 and L3) and device (D0 and D3hot) power
Adapter Card Aggregation
The number and variety of PCI Express native-mode devices is growing quickly. As these devices become mainstream, it will be necessary to create multifunction and multi-port
adapter cards with PCI Express capability. The PEX 8517 can be used to create an adapter or mezzanine card that aggregates the PCI Express devices into a single port that can be plugged into a backplane or motherboard. Figure 3 shows the PEX 8517 in this application.
Dual Host/Fabric Model
The ExpressLane PEX 8517 supports applications requiring dual host, host failover, and load-sharing applications through the non-transparency feature. Figure 5 illustrates a dual host system with dual switch fabric in dual-star configuration. The redundancy of the host and the fabric can be achieved through many possible configurations using the NonTransparent Bridge (NTB) function of PEX 8517. In the configuration shown below, Host 1 controls Switch 1 and its associated I/Os while Host 2 controls Switch 2 and its associated I/Os. The hosts and switches are isolated using NTB functionality of PEX 8517 on the host boards. If one of the hosts fails the surviving host can remove the failing host from the configuration and gain control of both switches and all I/Os. Similarly, if one of the switches fails the host associated with that switch can send control messages to its I/Os through the surviving switch through the NTB function.
Figure 3. Aggregation Adapter Card The adapter card in Figure 3 can be transparent, in which case the PCI Express I/O devices are just standard I/O endpoints such as Ethernet or Fibre Channel. Alternatively, the PEX 8517 can provide a non-transparent port to the system (via the card's edge connector). In this case, one of the PCI Express devices can be a CPU or other "intelligent" device with on-chip processing capability - thus needing address domain isolation from the rest of the system. This approach is commonly used in RAID controllers.
Intelligent Adapter Card
The PEX 8517 supports the non-transparency feature. Figure 4 illustrates a host system using an intelligent adapter card. Figure 5. Dual Host/Fabric Mode
Embedded Systems
The PEX 8517 can also be utilized in embedded applications. Figure 6 shows several independent modules connecting through the PEX 8517. The port widths for each module can be configured as required. The Peer-to-peer communication feature of the PEX 8517 allows these modules to communicate with each other without any centralized control.
Figure 4. Intelligent Adapter Usage In this figure, the CPU on the adapter card is isolated from the host CPU. The PEX 8517 non-transparent port allows the two CPUs to be isolated but communicate with each other through various registers that are designed in the PEX 8517 for that purpose. The host CPU can dynamically re-assign both the upstream port and the non-transparent port of PEX 8517 allowing the system to be reconfigured.
Figure 6. Embedded Systems
Software Usage Model
From a system model viewpoint, each PCI Express port is a virtual PCI to PCI bridge device and has its own set of PCI Express configuration registers. It is through the upstream port that the BIOS or host can configure the other ports using standard PCI enumeration. The virtual PCI to PCI bridges within the PEX 8517 are compliant to the PCI and PCI Express system models. The Configuration Space Registers (CSRs) in a virtual primary/secondary PCI to PCI bridge are accessible by type 0 configuration cycles through the virtual primary bus interface (matching bus number, device number, and function number).
Interrupt Sources/Events
The PEX 8517 supports the INTx interrupt message type (compatible with PCI 2.3 Interrupt signals) or Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) when enabled. Interrupts/messages are generated by PEX 8517 for hot-plug events, doorbell interrupts, baseline error reporting, and advanced error reporting.
Development Tools
PLX offers hardware and software tools to enable rapid customer design activity. These tools consist of a hardware module (PEX 8517RDK), hardware documentation, and a Software Development Kit (SDK).
PORT 1 - X4 Lane Status LEDs
RDK
The RDK hardware module includes the PEX 8517 with one x4 (card-edge slot) port and three additional x4 ports (see Figure 7). The RDK is available with x4 card edge connector and adapters for x1 edge connectors are available to plug the RDK into smaller slots. The PEX 8517RDK hardware module can be installed in a motherboard, used as a riser card, or configured as a bench-top board. The PEX 8517RDK can be used to test and validate customer software. Additionally, it can be used as an evaluation vehicle for PEX 8517 features and benefits.
PORT 2 - X4 HD Power Connector PORT 3 - X2
Manual Reset
PORT 4 - X2 Hot Plug Ckt. JTAG Header r V e 1ot -sr oI e t-nv n Voo 2NC 1 DIP switch for cfg.
SDK
The SDK tool set includes: - Linux & Windows drivers - C/C++ Source code, Objects, libraries - User's Guides & Application examples
Windows/Linux Apps
User Space
PEX8518 PEX 8518 8517 8518
RefClk Reset Ckt. PERST# (Upstream Port) x4
PEX
I2C
PEX API
Kernel Space PCIe Driver NT PnP Driver
EEPROM
Figure 7. PEX 8517RDK
Hardware
PCI Express Interface
Product Ordering Information
PLX Technology, Inc. 870 W. Maude Ave. Sunnyvale, CA 94085 USA Tel: 1-800-759-3735 Tel: 1-408-774-9060 Fax: 1-408-774-2169 Email: info@plxtech.com Web: www.plxtech.com
Part Number
PEX 8517-AC25BI PEX 8517-AC25BI G PEX 8517RDK
Description
16 Lane, 5 Port PCIe Switch, 312-ball PBGA 27x27mm pkg 16 Lane, 5 Port PCIe Switch, 312-ball PBGA 27x27mm pkg, Pb-free PEX 8517 Rapid Development Kit with x4 Connector
Please visit the PLX Web site at http://www.plxtech.com/8517 or contact PLX sales at 408-774-9060 for sampling.
(c) 2006 PLX Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. PLX and the PLX logo are registered trademarks of PLX Technology, Inc. ExpressLane is a trademark of PLX Technology, Inc., which may be registered in some jurisdiction. All other product names that appear in this material are for identification purposes only and are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Information supplied by PLX is believed to be accurate and reliable, but PLX Technology, Inc. assumes no responsibility for any errors that may appear in this material. PLX Technology, Inc. reserves the right, without notice, to make changes in product design or specification.
PEX8517-SIL-PB-1.6
05/07

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