connectivityZONE Products for the week of April 16, 2007
Pericom Semiconductor Says…
PCI Express Offering with Low Power, Small Footprint Packet Switch Family
The GreenPacket family includes the industry's smallest available packet switch
Pericom Semiconductor Corporation has announced the addition of a new PCI Express packet switch product family designed for power, size and value sensitive applications, such as volume motherboard/workstation, docking stations, networking control planes, video, graphics and embedded applications, and mobile applications.
"Pericom is matching key PCI Express market segment needs with new product offerings," said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at the Linley Group, a respected IC industry analyst firm. "The GreenPacket family of switch products enable OEMs to cost effectively upgrade existing motherboard and related platforms as well as accelerate new PCIe based I/O designs."
"Pericom is pleased to add three new advanced performance GreenPacket switches to our variety of PCI Express products," said Bill Weir, Pericom's senior marketing director of Connect Products. "We are actively engaged with volume market segment customers who recognize that the size, power, and cost benefits of this product family allow them to fully leverage CPU chipset I/O expansion in new platform designs."
The GreenPacket packet switch family consists of three different port and lane-count configurations: a 4-Port/4 Lane (PI7C9X20404GP), a 5-Port/5 Lane (PI7C9X20505GP), and a 5-Port/8 Lane (PI7C9X20508GP). The product family is specifically designed for low power consumption and small package size, optimized PCB layout, and fully meets the requirements of the latest PCI-SIG PCIe 1.1 and PCI 1.2 specifications. Unique features include special low-power and power-down modes, RoHS compliant packages, and small footprint. The PI7C9X20404GP is the industry's smallest packet switch at 12x12mm.
EN-Genius Says . . .
Pericom's family of small PCIe packet switches for low-lane count applications is a sign that the market is maturing enough to support specialized niches and higher-volume applications with tight BOM cost constraints. But lower cost does not mean cheap, and Pericom has endowed this switch series with some nice touches that give it better performance and power efficiency than your everyday vanilla PCIe switch.
Like most of the current crop of PCIe switches, the GreenPacket packet switch family supports a cut-through mode for situations where low latency is required as well as the standard store-and-forward for high-touch applications such as inspection and traffic management. The traffic management logic supports several programmable congestion arbitration modes including round-robin, weighted round robin, time-based round robin, or strict priority. The switch's on-chip memory eliminates the need for an external buffer for either mode.
Another bonus feature can be found in the switch PHYs. While the PHYs are based on the same third-party IP that several other companies license, Pericom used its deep analog experience to help deliver an implementation that has better eye pattern margin in longer, more heavily-impaired channels that suffer from high attenuation, poor impedance match, and other unpleasant conditions found in real-world environments.
The switches also have power-saving features that go beyond basic PCI-SIG requirements. In addition to turning off an unused lane's PHY you can program the chip to turn off a de-selected port's PLLs, clocks and logic, a trick that saves up to 20% more power than simply turning off the PHY. But even with all ports blazing, its power consumption is reasonable. For example, their 20404 4-port device draws 800 mW when fully active, 400 mW in idle, and 340 mW in its advanced power savings mode.
Despite the value they deliver, Pericom's econo-switches have found ways to save costs, including eliminating the logic used to support non-transparent mode: ie the ability to talk to two or more independent root complexes. This is very appropriate for the simpler, single-master systems found in the lower-end, high-volume markets that the GreenSwitch series targets and, if you really need them, Pericom does have bridges that can handle non-transparent operations.
The symmetric X1 lane switches that make up the bulk of the family are well-suited for the motherboards of high-performance PCs and docking stations, where the speed of a single lane is more than enough to drive the storage, graphics, and other peripherals they'll be talking to. I'd also agree with Pericom that there is even potential for single- and dual-lane PCIe finding a home in network control plane applications. If you need some more asymmetric bandwidth, the 20508 5-Port/8 lane device 4 has an optional X4 uplink operating mode that's designed to work especially with Intel MCH North Bridges often used in servers, workstations, and high-end PCs.
The PI7C9X20505GP and PI7C9X20508GP are sampling with customer evaluation platforms available with production in May 2007. The PI7C9X20404GP will sample in May, with production in June 2007. Typical pricing is around $3/port in 10-k piece lots.
Data Sheet PI7C9X20404GP
Data Sheet PI7C9X20505GP
Data Sheet PI7C9X20508GP
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