Docking Station Application
The PEX 8606 is ideal for IO expansion applications. The
support for SSC isolation as well as its low power
consumption makes it an ideal candidate for peripheral
expansion. Figure 3 below shows a block diagram for a
docking station. With PCI Express slots, the IO subsystem
can be expanded in order to extend the peripheral capabilities
of a notebook PC.
.
Intelligent Adapter Card
The PEX 8606 supports the
non-transparency
feature.
Figure 6 illustrates a host system using an intelligent adapter
card.
Figure 6. Intelligent Adapter Usage
Figure 3. Docking Station
In this figure, the CPU on the Mezzanine card is isolated from
the host CPU. The PEX 8606 non-transparent port allows the
two CPUs to be isolated but communicate with each other
through various registers that are designed in the PEX 8606
for that purpose. The host CPU
can dynamically re-assign
both the upstream port and the non-transparent port
of
PEX 8606 allowing the system to be reconfigured.
Control Planes for Large Systems
Control for larger systems can be accomplished with a bigger
switch. However, in many cases where multiple PCIe ports
are available on the CPU, multiple switches can be used in
order to balance the traffic as shown in Figure 4.
Active-Standby Failover Model
The PEX 8606 supports applications requiring
dual host, host
failover
applications through the
non-transparency
feature.
Figure 7 illustrates a dual host system with an active and
standby processor configuration.
The redundancy of the host and the fabric can be achieved
through many possible configurations using NTB function of
PEX 8606. In the configuration shown below Processor A is
the primary active host of the PCI Express system. Processor
B acts as the backup Host. In the case of a failure on Processor
A, application software is instructed to migrate the PCI
Express system to Processor B. Consequently, Processor B
becomes the active host and Processor A can be replaced as
the backup Host.
Figure 4. Control Planes for Large Systems
Embedded Control Planes
The PEX 8606 is well suited for embedded control plane
applications. An example of such application is a packet
processing module, as shown in Figure 5. In this example, the
FPGAs and ASICs implement an x1 PCI Express Interface.
With its high port count, the PEX 8606 can provide
connectivity to a high number of FPGAs and ASICs for a
robust packet processing communications sub-system.
Figure 7. Active-Standby Host Mode
Figure 5. Packet Processing Module
PLX [ PLX TECHNOLOGY ]
