Features

PCIe-423-3 Block Diagram

The PCIe-423 is a switched PCI Express active riser card for Intel's SR2500 Server or Intel's PAL5000 Motherboard. By replacing the passive low-profile riser card with the PCIe-423, users can improve system I/O performance and capacity with three additional low-profile x8 PCI Express slots, peer-to-peer communications, and better utilization of the I/O bandwidth.

More Slots
The PCIe-423 provides up to three x8 PCIe low profile slots. Intel's standard riser card only provides two x4 slots or one x8 slot.

Peer-to-Peer Communications
The PCIe-423 allows the I/O boards to communicate with each other at the full 20 Gb/s of the x8 PCIe interface.

Better Utilization of the I/O Links
The PCIe-423 allows several I/O boards to share the x8 PCIe link to the host processor and to host memory in a more efficient manner. The Intel riser card allows two I/O boards access to the host processor and memory over two x4 Links. The PCIe-423 allows the I/O boards to share a single x8 link prompting faster data transfers to the host system.

Non-Blocking Switch Fabric
The PCIe-423 PCI Express supports a non-blocking switch fabric between the three PCI Express slots and the host system. The non-blocking switch fabric supports complex peer-to-peer data flows.

Quality of Service
QoS features allow different applications to route packets through the fabric with differentiated priorities and bandwidths, and deterministic latencies. Two Virtual Channels per lane and eight traffic classes allows for different traffic priorities. Virtual Channel arbitration algorithms are user's selectable and allow the QoS to be optimized for different traffic requirements.

End-to-End Packet Integrity
PCI Express Expansion Series provides end-to-end CRC protection and Poison bit support to guarantee error free data transmission. Corrupted packets are automatically re-transmitted by the hardware with no software intervention.