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PCI EXPRESS NEWS - March 2009Welcome to PLX's PCIe News. Thank you for subscribing. If you can not read this email, please view it on the Web. |
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In this issue:
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PLX Acquires Leading Consumer/SOHO Storage Company, Oxford
Through this acquisition, PLX will have a leadership position in two of the fastest-growing interconnect chip markets - PCI Express-based systems and external-storage. Major synergies include common interconnect technologies and design flows, sales, marketing and support systems, and supply chains. Most importantly, PLX can create innovative products that combine the considerable intellectual property and industry knowledge of Oxford and PLX. The two companies share a customer-focused business philosophy that includes delivering the highest quality products and services, and a culture that rewards innovation and results. Customers should take note of the following new storage products. Aimed at the emerging shared home network-attached storage (NAS) consumer market, the highly integrated OXE810x NAS platform is designed for bridging between Ethernet and up to two serial advanced technology attachments (SATA) hard disks. The company also recently introduced the OXUFS936x RAID platform, a universal interface (i.e. USB2.0/FireWire/eSATA) to SATA digital storage and retrieval device with integrated hardware RAID controller for consumer direct-attached storage (DAS) devices. Read more: http://www.plxtech.com/about/news/pr/?y=2008&rel=1216 Intel Honors PLX for PCI Express 2.0 Support on Nehalem Platform
"PLX has again collaborated with Intel to improve interoperability, this time with Intel's new Nehalem server and workstation platforms," said Jim Pappas, Intel director of server technology initiatives and industry enabling. "The upcoming Nehalem server will be Intel's first mainstream server supporting PCI Express 2.0, which doubles I/O bandwidth. We are pleased PLX has worked closely with us in our IHV Optimization Lab and with our validation teams to help make PCI Express 2.0 successful on these new platforms." PLX, whose PCIe switching and bridging devices are used worldwide in virtually all industry segments, committed engineering resources and worked closely with Intel validation teams to test PLX ExpressLane™ PCIe Gen 2 (PCI Express 2.0) switching devices. This collaborative effort helped Intel successfully validate its Nehalem microarchitecture for several high-priority target applications. Read more: http://www.plxtech.com/about/news/pr/?y=2009&rel=0217 PLX Technology Now Sampling PCI Express Switches Showcasing Integrated DMA
PLX announced the sampling of three PCIe switch devices whose unique architecture features integrated direct memory access (DMA) engines and multicast capabilities. The ExpressLane™ PEX 8619 (16 lanes, 16 ports), PEX 8615 (12 lanes, 12 ports) and PEX 8609 (eight lanes, eight ports) PCIe Gen 2-compliant switches are now available to help improve system performance by enhancing current DMA usage and providing additional cost savings by removing the DMA burden from processors and/or endpoints. Each PLX switch provides four DMA channels to support the high data rates required in the storage systems, servers, networking, control plane, and embedded systems markets. The DMA engine in the PLX devices can also be used to perform the multicast function. The advantages for implementing a DMA-based multicast scheme include support for an unlimited number of multicast groups (each descriptor ring represents a multicast group), a reliable multicast scheme (status for each copy made can be provided by a DMA engine), that multicast transfers are not limited to posted transactions, and most importantly, DMA-based multicast from PLX provides a PCIe multicast solution today. The addition of multicast in PCIe devices is being addressed today within the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG®) in the form of an engineering change notice (ECN) to the PCIe 2.0 specification. The ECN describes the function of multicast, which enables the PCIe switch to send a single packet to many destinations simultaneously, thus dramatically reducing latency and increasing the effective throughput of a system.
Read press release: http://www.plxtech.com/news Additional articles referencing these devices: Introducing the First Single-Chip PCIe to USB Host Controller
The single-chip device has been designed to achieve the high level system performance required by demanding bridging applications, while at the same time offering fast, easy design-in. As the first single-chip PCIe end-point to USB 2.0 Host, SPI and SRAM solution, this highly integrated device delivers up to 62.5 Mbytes/s data throughput and low CPU utilization at a 30 to 40 percent cost saving, while also saving designers from three to six months of development time.
Contact Sales: www.plxtech.com/contact New White PapersThese white papers require an NDA and premium member PLX Website access. View now or request access. Implementing Multicast Using DMA in a PCIe Switch PLX Gen 2 Testing over "16 / 30" Tyco Comm Backplane PCIe Receiver Equalization Using PEX 8648 SMA based (SI) Card
Contact Sales: www.plxtech.com/contact Packet Generators, Analyzers Incorporated in New Generation of PCI Express SwitchesAs semiconductor design technology has advanced to incorporate PCI Express (PCIe), testing of applications, performance and corner cases has become more difficult. Commercially available PCIe analyzers and exercisers can be very useful, but they are expensive and physically bulky, making them hard to obtain and difficult to fit into a crowded laboratory. Frustrated by the limitations of these systems, design engineers have developed a new generation of PCIe switches which incorporate PCIe packet generator and analyzer functionality. These new features are available through reference design kits (RDKs) which include a PCIe switch ASIC and software APIs to enable the packet generator and analyzer capabilities. This article was originally written for use in Test and Measurement World magazine. Ethernet Tunneling through PCI Express Inter-Processor Communication, Low Latency Storage IOTraditionally, large scale-up servers used cache-coherent buses for inter-processor communications. These proprietary buses and servers are very costly and power-hungry. Today's powerful x86 servers replace proprietary scale-up architectures with low-cost machines connected through high-speed, low-latency clustered interconnects. This article will take an in-depth view of their cost and power benefits compared to scale-up architectures, and explain that Ethernet can be tunneled through a PCI Express (PCIe) fabric to provide a very-high-performance, low-cost cluster interconnect suitable for storage IO. This article was originally written for use in Computer Technology Review magazine. New Family of PLX Products - Oxford High-Performance UART'sThe PLX acquisition of Oxford has captured the global leading family of Serial Bridges. PLX's new family of Oxford High-Performance UART's (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) leads the industry in every performance category. The lineup includes, PCIe Bridge to Dual Serial & Parallel Port, PCIe Bridge to Quad Serial Port, PCIe Bridge to Octal Serial Port products.
The OXPCIe200 represents the industry's first multi-port device to offer designers a range of options for PCI Express bridging that can be used together or in isolation to connect subsystems to a PCIe-based system. Targeting the bridging, device control and IO expansion needs of industrial control, PC peripherals, ExpressCard™ modules, point-of-sale terminals, servers, communications systems and embedded designs, the OXPCIe200 provides the bridging power required for inter-processor communication and device control in these PCIe-based systems. A three port device, it has a unique connectivity set comprised of a USB 2.0 host port, a port configurable as a USB 2.0 host, SPI or SRAM interface and a UART port.
Contact sales: http://www.plxtech.com/contact Free PCI Express Gen 2 Technical Seminar
This is not a bogus marketing pitch event. System architects, design engineers, engineering managers or anyone involved in designing a system that requires PCI Express should not miss this informative technical seminar. What you will learn:
When: Thursday, May 14th 2009. Raffle: Bring your business card to participate. Prizes include one Apple iPod Touch 32GB ($400 value) and Free Premium Dashcourses Training. Limited Seating: Register Now Low Cost, High Quality PCI Express Technical Training (online or in-house)PLX has partnered with two premium global educators -- Mindshare Inc. and Dashcourses International. Choose from On-Demand Recordings, Live Virtual Classrooms, or Brick-n-Mortar Classrooms that are either open to the public or privately held in your facility. To learn more about these premium services and receive a very special PLX discount, please visit our Website for details at http://www.plxtech.com/support/training/ On Demand Technical Support 24/7The PLX web-based technical support portal is your ticket to fast relief in problem resolution. We have built a large FAQ site with a broad range of immediate answers. In the event your request can not be found in the current knowledge base, simply enter a new case and our global support team will jump to action. The PLX support portal login can be found at the top of our www.plxtech.com home page or directly through this URL. Access PCI Express datasheets or update your PLX profile and newsletter subscriptions by logging in at http://www.plxtech.com/mydata/ Copyright 2008: PLX, ExpressLane, visionPAK and performancePAK are trademarks of PLX Technology Inc., PCI Express and PCIe are trademarks of the PCI-SIG. |
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PLX has acquired all of the outstanding shares of capital stock of Oxford Semiconductor, Inc., a fabless provider of industry-leading silicon and software for the consumer and small office/home office (SOHO) storage markets. Established in 1992, Oxford Semiconductor has been providing reliable, high-performance silicon and software solutions to interconnect digital systems, including PCIe, USB, FireWire, Ethernet, SATA and eSATA. 
The rapidly growing consumer and SOHO external storage markets account for the majority of Oxford sales. Oxford provides advanced system-on-chip solutions for both direct-attached storage (DAS) and network-attached storage (NAS) external drives. The amount of digital data that consumers need to store is increasing exponentially. Trends such as digital photography, digital video, MP3s and the on-line distribution of high-definition movies are driving increased sales of external storage devices in the consumer market. Corresponding with these trends, demand for data-protection features such as redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID), automatic back-up and encryption is also growing. 
PLX has been recognized by Intel its outstanding contribution to advancing the PCI Express 2.0 interconnects on Intel® microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem, platforms. Intel acknowledged PLX's commitment to delivering PCI Express 2.0 switches that offer power and performance efficiency to the new quad-processor Nehalem platform, and by delivering essential multi-system and end-point interoperability.
Industry-First Devices Perform Multicast, Boost Performance in Demanding Applications
OXPCIe200 is a three port device; it has a unique connectivity set comprised of a USB 2.0 host port, a port configurable as a USB 2.0 host, SPI or SRAM interface and a UART port. The device delivers high-performance PCIe bridging with up to 40 percent cost savings and up to six months reduction in development time. Targeting the bridging, device control and IO expansion needs of industrial control, PC peripherals, ExpressCard modules, point-of-sale terminals, servers, communications systems and embedded designs, the OXPCIe200 provides the bridging power required for inter-processor communication and device control in these PCIe-based systems. 
The Expresso family of PCI Express to Multi-Serial Port expansion devices deliver high performance, reliable, industrial-grade PCI Express-based connectivity expansion solutions to interconnect system processors with multiple serial peripherals. Driven by the transition in processor-based systems and associated chipsets from PCI to PCI Express as the main peripheral bus, the Expresso family of OXPCIe952, OXPCIe954, OXPCIe958, OXPCIe840 targets the PC peripheral, industrial control, point of sale, server, communications and embedded systems markets with 2, 4, and 8 serial port options plus a standalone parallel port device. The devices offer considerable performance, time-to-market and system cost enhancements over competing solutions, including PCI-SIG certified PCI Express compliance, WHQL certified device drivers, a CPU overhead savings of up to 70 percent for 8 ports at 1Mbps, easy device customization with the company's Oxide customization tool, and 30-40 percent BOM savings.
Oxide™ Software for Device Customization
PLX Technology, LeCroy, Avnet and Dashcourses (training specialists) invite you to attend a free PCI Express 2.0+ technical seminar with demonstrations. Thursday, May 14th 2009 in San Jose.