PLX Teams With FCI

PLX Technology, Inc. and FCI Electronics, manufacturer of connectors and interconnect systems, announced collaboration on a live demonstration of PCIe over optical cabling at the 39th European Conference on Optical Communications (ECOC) event, held from 23-25 September in London, UK.

They were demonstrating the use of FCI’s new mini-SAS high-density (MSHD) active optical cable (AOC) to provide 32Gb/s (PCIe Gen3, x4) optical connectivity in a small-form-factor solution. The demonstration highlighted how a PLX PCIe switch card connects to a PLX five-bay PCIe expansion card through the use of a standard MSHD connector and FCI’s new MSHD AOC. The expansion card allows any devices connected (such as PCIe adaptors, SSDs and NIC cards) to interact with the main motherboard/server as if it were a device installed inside the chassis. The demonstration platform can be used by those interested in developing system solutions for PCIe over non-standard PCIe cabling.

The demonstration featuring FCI MSHD cables and PLX PCIe switch technology wre also give engineers an opportunity to see the performance benefits that can be realized in high-performance computing, communications and networking applications. FCI’s new MSHD AOC is the next-generation SAS-based storage I/O system that allows for the signal transmission of both SAS 2.1 (6Gb/s per channel) and the proposed SAS 3.0 (12Gb/s per channel) industry standard protocols. This increases linear board density while doubling the maximum per-port aggregate bandwidth. These attributes enable accelerated access and transfer of data within systems.

“We have seen a significant number of customers coming to PLX and asking for high-density, high-performance, low-cost connectivity solutions to expand PCIe outside the box,” said Reginald Conley, VP, applications engineering, PLX. “To be effective and meet the needs of a wide range of PCIe users, these solutions must possess what we call the ‘triple threat’ connectivity option – copper, optical and AOC. In doing so, the widest range of performance and cost metrics can be met, and Mini-SAS HD has the potential to be one such solution.”

“We are very excited to have the opportunity to work with PLX and explore how we can deliver unprecedented power, range and versatility in computing communications and networking applications,” said Jim David, portfolio director for FCI’s high speed IO product lines. “This demonstration is an excellent platform for the community to understand how FCI’s MSHD AOC solutions can support its latest designs and optimize data transfer speed and signal integrity within their system.”

PLX is in PCIe switch products, with 18 ExpressLane PCIe Gen3 switches in production or sampling – with many more in development and planning underway for PCIe Gen4 products. In addition to its PCIe switches performing ‘within the box’ to optimize solid-state storage, its ExpressFabric PCIe-based fabric products provide system architects with a ‘box-to-box’ alternative in small- to medium-sized data center clusters. An ExpressFabric-based rack allows for the elimination of costly and power-hungry protocol translation devices and converges management to a PCIe-based top-of-rack (ToR) switch.

FCI also offers a range of storage and server I/O connector options commonly used in enterprise applications that employ 6Gb SAS (SFF8482), SATA (SATA), or FC drives for storage, DDR memory and PCIe connectors. Its suite of connectors allows server and storage engineers to find the most suitable connector solutions at every stage of the product development cycle.