PLX Technology announced new ultra-high lane count PCI Express (PCIe) Gen3 switches for storage systems, high-end graphics and communications platforms. The new ExpressLane PCIeGen3 switches include the PEX8796 (96 lanes, 24 ports), PEX8780 (80 lanes, 20 ports) and PEX8764 (64 lanes, 16 ports) devices. The PEX8796 switch features a bandwidth of 8 Gigatransfers per second, per lane, in full duplex mode and a throughput of 1,536 gigabits per second (192 gigabytes/s). An enhanced PLX multi-host architecture allows users to configure each device in legacy single host mode or multi-host mode, which enables designers to build PCIe-based systems supporting high-availability, failover, redundant, and clustered systems. In multi-host mode, a virtual switch is created for each host port and its associated downstream ports inside the device. The traffic between the ports of such a virtual switch is completely isolated from the traffic in other virtual switches. The devices also employ a multi-clock domain, which allows the user to terminate spread spectrum clock (SSC)-enabled domains (supported on all ports), thus removing the need to pass a common clock across a backplane. The PLX performancePAK architecture supports packet cut-through with a maximum latency of 150ns (in a x16-to-x16 configuration). This low latency, combined with large packet memory, support for a packet payload size of up to 2048 bytes, flexible common buffer/credit pool, and a non-blocking internal switch architecture, enables a full-line rate on all ports in performance-hungry applications.

PLX Technology
408-774-9060, www.plxtech.com