By Scott Knowlton and Kurt Lender, PCI-SIG Marketing Work Group Chairs

PCI-SIG® has shifted to virtual events for the 2020 calendar year and our first major members event was the Virtual PCI-SIG Developers Conference. Members are encouraged to log onto the members-only website and view the virtual recordings on a range of relevant PCI Express® (PCIe®) technology topics.

At last year’s DevCon, we introduced the PCIe technology product wall, highlighting various member products. Given that we have over 830 member companies who have products in a range of markets like AI, machine learning, HPC, networking, automotive, IoT and more, we wanted to allow them the opportunity to showcase their innovative products in a virtual format. This year we received 29 product submissions that utilize PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 architectures from 22 PCI-SIG member companies. We would like to introduce the various PCIe architecture products in this year’s PCI-SIG PCIe Technology Virtual Product Wall:

Test Solutions

Anritsu -- Signal Quality Analyzer-R MP1900A

MP1900A series is an 8-slot modular, high-performance BERT supporting all-in-one Physical layer measurements of both high-speed network interfaces as NRZ and PAM4, and PCI Express/USB, bus interfaces. Features include:

• Supports PCI Express 3.0/4.0/5.0 specifications and 400G PAM4
• All-in-one PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0 RX LEQ Test (Golden Test Suite)
• Supports Teledyne LeCroy®/Tektronix®/Keysight® Real Time Scope
• USB4™ and Thunderbolt™ 3 RX Test
• Protocol aware: Link training/Equalization and LTSSM analysis

Neosem Inc. -- FX6

The Fx6 is a 6th Generation SSD Functional Tester from Neosem supporting the PCI Express 4.0 specification and earlier protocols. It is a CPU based architecture providing reduced TCO for HVM manufacturing. The Fx6 is compatible with U.3, M.2 and EDSFF Form Factors. Finally, it is available in full range of test enclosures supporting environments from Ambient through -40oC to 125oC testing.

PLDA – INSPECTOR

INSPECTOR is a PCIe 4.0 specification compliant interposer module designed for non-intrusive monitoring, diagnostic, exercising and debug of PCIe devices. INSPECTOR uses transparent switching technology to connect on the upstream side to a PCIe host platform, and on the downstream side to the device under test (DUT). INSPECTOR supports PCIe 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, and 4.0 interfaces on either ports, and up to 8 lanes (x8). It is typically used for bring-up and diagnostic testing of PCIe 4.0 DUTs at PCIe 4.0 16GT/s technology speed using existing PCIe hosts operating at PCIe 3.0 8GT/s speed but can support any link speed/width combination on upstream and downstream ports. INSPECTOR's built-in diagnostic capabilities allow validation engineers to instantly diagnose issues with their PCIe devices, without the need for expensive test equipment.

Silicon Labs – Si5332 PCIe 5.0 Specification Programmable Clock Generator Evaluation Board

The Si5332 PCIe 5.0 Specification Programmable Clock Generator Evaluation Board provides 12 clock outputs at a mix of frequencies (5-333MHz), formats (HCSL 85/100ohm, LVDS, LVPECL) & spread (0-2.5%). It features an easy configuration from ClockBuilder Pro™ SW to EVB over USB, real-time power and junction temperature measurements and is also available in 6 and 8 output versions, industrial and automotive.

Silicon Labs – SiLabs PCIe 5.0 Specification Clock Jitter Analysis Tool

The SiLabs PCIe 5.0 Specification Clock Jitter Analysis Tool analyzes Refclk signal integrity and jitter for PCIe 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 specifications Common Clock, SRNS, and SRIS architectures. Major features include:

• Reports pass/fail for all PCI-SIG specified Refclk parameters
• Accepts all major oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer files
• Simply download to a Windows machine from the web

Storage Solutions

AIC Inc. – RSC-1AT

RSC-1AT is a T-series 1U SAS/SATA storage server chassis supports 8 x 12G 2.5" and 2 x 6G 2.5" hot swap drive bays. This environmentally friendly solution features high-efficiency power supply, SGCC pre-plated steel, tool-less slide rail, and easy-swap PWM fans, offering a cost-effective solution ideally suited for a broad range of applications. Features include:

• Tool-less design supports quick installation and easy maintenance
• Engineered to be flexible with redundant power supply and PCI Express 4.0 technology support options
• Short depth for a broad range of applications

Amphenol – PCIe SFF Connector

SAS/PCIe 4.0 (U.2&U.3) connectors come with 16GT/s (PCIe lanes) or 24Gb/s (SAS lanes) speeds to meet the demands of next-generation servers. The 68-position, SAS/PCIe receptacle and header enables implementation of high speed Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard disk drive (HDD) interface as well as Peripheral Component Express (PCIe^®)-based devices. The molded guide post allows device plug and receptacle to self-align during mating process. With halogen-free high temperature thermoplastic, these connectors are made to withstand diverse conditions. It also offers a durability of 500 mating cycles.

• Compatible with SFF8639 specification
• Capable of meeting 24Gb/s SSDs and HDDs or PCle based devices at 16GT/s
• Footprint backward compatible to 12G, 6G and 3G SAS connectors

Amphenol – PCIe CEM Connector

Amphenol’s PCIe CEM Connectors meet PCIe CEM specification for PCIe 4.0 architecture at 16GT/s and PCIe 5.0 architecture at 32GT/s data rate. The optimized series supports backwards mating and is footprint compatible with PCIe 3/2/1.

These 1.00mm pitch, vertical and right angle card edge connectors enable all generations of PCI Express signaling in desktop PCs, workstations and servers.

Amphenol's expansive range of vertical PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 connectors will include options for surface mount (SMT), through hole solder, press-fit (PF) and straddle mount terminations.

Genesys Logic Inc. – GL9768

GL9768 is an SD 8.0 Card Reader Controller. It supports PCIe 4.0 technology up to 16Gbps transfer rate, PCIe Technology L1 sub-states, RTD3 and Modern Standby. The GL9768 is an all-in-one SD Express card reader support SD8/SD7/SD4/SD3.

ATP Electronics – ATP NVMe™ M.2 2280 SSD N600Si

M.2 solid state modules based on the NVMe™ protocol leverage the blazing-fast PCI Express® (PCIe®) interface to deliver dramatic improvements in speed and performance to fulfill the increasing demand for responsiveness in enterprise storage systems and to support the growing data-hungry needs of today’s enterprise. Delivering 32 Gb/s bandwidth on a PCIe 3.1 x4 slot (8 Gb/s per lane), ATP NVMe SSDs outperform Serial ATA 6 Gb/s SSDs with 4-6X faster access, over 3X lower latency, and higher Input/Output per Second (IOPS). ATP NVMe SSDs with industrial operating temperature rating deliver stable performance even in extreme temperatures ranging from -40°C to 85°C, while Dynamic Thermal Throttling automatically adjusts the speed to maintain cooler operation under intense and heavy workloads.

One Stop Systems – OSS-BP-522

Five expansion slot backplane with one PCIe 4.0 x16 target slot for OSS HIB Cards and 5 PCIe 4.0 x16 slots. The backplane has three double wide slots and two single wide slots.

One Stop Systems – OSS-PCIe-HIB616-x16

PCIe x16 PCIe 4.0 host interface board with PCIe quad SFF-8644 cable connectors as used in the PCI-SIG PCI Express External Cable Specification can be configured as x16, two x8, and two x4 or four x4 cable ports. The cable adapter operates in host or target mode with a DIP switch setting change.

PHISON – PS5016-E16 SSD

The E16 is a consumer-grade ready PCI Express® (PCIe®) 4.0 Specification NVMe™ SSD solution available in the market. Features include:

• PCIe 4.0 Specification, NVMe 1.3 Support
• Seq. Read/Write up to 5000/4400 MB/s
• 3D TLC/QLC Support, Capacity up to 4TB

Viking Enterprise Solutions – VSS2249R

The Viking Enterprise Solutions (VES) VSS2249R storage server offers 24 2.5” PCIe v4.0 NVMe drives (U.2) combined with two server modules. Each server has access to all 24 NVMe drives with dual port devices. The VSS2249R is a dense HA solution that provides the ultimate storage performance in a small package.

Retimers

Astera Labs – Aries PCIe 5.0, PCIe 4.0 Smart Retimers

The Aries Smart Retimers are purpose-built to seamlessly eliminate signal integrity issues for PCI Express (PCIe) 4.0 and 5.0 interconnects in server, cloud, and work-load optimized systems. Compliant to all PCIe and industry standard Retimer specs, the Aries Smart Retimer products double PCIe signal reach, enable complex system topologies and lower total solution cost/space by supporting features such as dynamic link bifurcation, transparent low latency modes, and multiple clocking modes including SRIS & SRNS. Deep diagnostics including built-in PCIe protocol and signal analyzers, reduce engineering effort/time and enable fleet management capabilities in Cloud-scale deployments.

The Aries Smart Retimer products are sampling now for PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0 applications (x16, x8, x8 ports).

Montage Technology – M88RT40816/M88RT41632

The M88RT40816/M88RT41632 are high performance Retimers, supporting PCIe 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 specifications. Supports 8 (M88RT40816) or 16 (M88RT41632) bi-directional 16Gbps lanes with adaptive signal conditioning for extended reach with cost-effective PCB materials. They are compliant to PCIe 4.0 Base Specification and mainstream common footprint specification. The Retimers feature low power, low latency meeting critical NVMe™ technology, networking and hardware acceleration application requirements.

NXP – PTN3944 – NXP PCIe 4.0 Linear Equalizer

The NXP PTN3944 includes superior signal integrity performance. It includes low-power consumption at 1.8 V Core and VDD_IO; ideal for datacenter and enterprise application. It has a compact package size and minimal external BOM.

Parade Technologies – PCIe 4.0 Retimers

Parade Technologies has two different PCIe 4.0 retimers: PS8925 – 4 Lane Retimer (bidirectional, 8 channels total) and Ps8926 – 16 Lane Retimer (bidirectional, 32 channels total). Features include:

• CTLE and DFE Equalization Compensates up to 30dB Loss
• SRIS and SRNS System Support
• Low Power Consumption

Networking Solutions

Broadcom – P2100G NetXtreme E-Series PCIe Technology Ethernet Adapter and N2100G NetXtreme E-Series OCP NIC 3.0 Ethernet Adapter 

The NetXtreme®-E Series P2100G 2x100G PCIe NIC is designed to build highly scalable, feature-rich networking solutions in servers for enterprise and cloud-scale networking and storage applications, including high-performance computing, telco, machine learning, storage disaggregation and data analytics. Features include:

• Dual-Port 100 Gb/s QSFP56 Ethernet PCIe 4.0 specification x16, 25G NRZ, 50G PAM-4 SerDes, and RoCE v1/v2
• On-chip tunneling protocol processing for MPLS, Geneve, VXLAN, and NVGRE
• BroadSAFE® Silicon Root of Trust, secure boot, and secure key storage

Dolphin Interconnect Solutions – MXH924 24 Port PCIe Technology Switch

The MXH924 24 Port PCIe Technology Switch is a microchip based PCIe 4.0 specification 1U 19-inch rackmount 24 x4 switch. Features include:

• 24 – x4 Cable Ports, SFF-8644
• PCIe specification x4 CMI cables
• 3 Meter copper cables
• 100 Meter optical cables
• 64 GT/s bidirectional throughput per port
• Cascadeable to larger systems
• Supports eXpressWare software for NTB along with transparent host and target

Dolphin Interconnect Solutions – MXH93X PCIe NTB/Transparent Host Target Adapter

The MXH932 PCIe 4.0 Transparent Host / Target Adapter includes advanced features for PCIe 4.0 transparent bridging and clock isolation. Features include:

• One X16 PCIe Edge Port
• Four X4 PCIe Cable Ports
• PCIe 4.0 or Minisas-Hd Cables
• Copper and Fiber Cable Support
• Quad Sff-8644 Connectors
• Low Profile Design
• Optional Board Management Software

Dolphin Interconnect Solutions – MXS924 24 Port PCIe Switch

The MXS924 enables users the ability to create a scalable PCIe technology fabric solution using standard PCIe copper or fiber cables. PCIe solutions running over back planes can now easily be enabled to run over external cables. Larger PCIe configurations can be realized by interconnecting multiple MXS924 switches. By loading the appropriate firmware, the MXS924 supports both transparent and non-transparent bridging (NTB) use cases for clustering and I/O expansion applications. Each connection is fully compliant with PCI Express 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 I/O specifications.

Marvell – AQC113

AQtion Ethernet Controllers offer network speeds for client computing. They support Multi-Gig speeds for a variety of applications including standalone Network Interface Cards (NICS), motherboards, networked attached storage, docking stations and TB/USB dongles for notebooks.

AQtion controllers incorporate industry-proven AQrate PHY technology which enables the delivery of Multi-Gig Ethernet over copper cabling. All AQtion controllers are compliant to the IEEE 802.3bz standard and are backward-compatible with legacy 1000BASE-T Ethernet.

NVIDIA – NVIDIA Mellanox BlueField-2 I/O Processing Unit (IPU)

BlueField-2 combines ConnectX-6 ASIC network adapter with an array of Arm processors and a high-speed memory controller. Features include:

• World-leading IPU and smartNIC solution for artificial intelligence, virtualization, networking and storage applications
• 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet IPU with In-Network Computing Acceleration Engines
• Advanced security, storage and virtualization offloads

NVIDIA – NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-6

The NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-6 is a 200Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet network adapter. It includes Ultra low latency and 215 million messages per second, In-Network Computing acceleration engines for compute intensive applications and NVMe™ over Fabric (NVMe-oF™) and Security engines.

PCI Express IP

Avery Design Systems – PCI-Xactor

The PCI-Xactor is a comprehensive PCIe 5.0 specification and PIPE 5.2 Verification IP solution for core through SOC verification. Features include:

• Native SystemVerilog/UVM agent models for Root Complex and Endpoint including SR-IOV
• Comprehensive protocol checking, debug, and coverage for better verification closure
• Compliance Test suite for RC, EP, Retimer, and Switch

Intel – Stratix® 10 DX FPGA Development Kit

The Intel® Stratix® 10 GX FPGA Development Kit delivers a complete design environment that includes all hardware and software you need to start taking advantage of the performance and capabilities available in Stratix® 10 GX FPGAs for your design needs. This development kit can be used to develop and test PCI Express® (PCIe®) 3.0 designs using the PCI-SIG®-compliant development board. Develop and test memory subsystems consisting of DDR4, DDR3, QDR IV, and RLDRAM III memories. Develop modular and scalable designs by using the FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) connectors to interface to a FMC mezzanine card provided by Altera partners and supporting protocols, such as JESD204B, Serial RapidIO®, 10 Gbps Ethernet (10GbE), SONET, Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI),OBSAI, and many others.

Intel – Agilex™ I-series FPGAs

Intel® Agilex™ I-Series SoC FPGAs are optimized for high performance processor interface and bandwidth intensive applications. Coherent attach to Intel® Xeon® processors with Compute Express Link, hardened PCIe 5.0 architecture support and transceiver support up to 112 Gbps make the Intel® Agilex™ I-Series SoC FPGAs a compelling choice for applications which demand massive interface bandwidth and high performance.

PLDA – PCIe Controller IP Product Line

PCIe Controller IP Product Line includes the following:

• XpressRICH: PCIe 5.0, 4.0, 3.1/3.0 IP Supporting Root Port, Endpoint, Dual-mode, Switch Port Configurations, with Native User Interface
• XpressRICH-AXI: XpressRICH and Optional Built-in DMA and Configurable AMBA AXI Interconnect
• XpressSWITCH:  PCIe 5.0 Multi-port Transparent Switch IP Core with 1 Upstream Port and up to 31 Downstream Ports

Synopsys  – DesignWare IP Complete Solution for PCIe 5.0 Specifications and Below

DesignWare IP includes the following main features:

• Controller: proven x1 to x16 links with up to 512-bit data path; extensive RAS/DES features; enables architectural exploration
• PHY: leading power, performance, area; supports > 36 dB channel loss; available in 10+ FinFET process technologies
• VIP: comprehensive protocol checks & plans to achieve rapid verification closure; Source Code Test Suites available

Join PCI-SIG Today

The PCIe technology ecosystem continues to expand with the help of our innovative member companies and we invite you to join PCI-SIG and to further grow this community. The PCI-SIG product wall video is also available in on the blog and on the PCI-SIG YouTube.