PLX Fresco Logic Unite

PLX Technology, Inc. announced availability of a new reference design kit capable of new life connectivity into older PCI-based PCs by providing a bridge to high-performance SuperSpeed USB peripheral devices.

"Our lab tests confirm excellent performance results of 139 Mbytes/s when reading data from a USB 3.0 SSD," said Jimmy Chou, PLX marketing director for USB products. "This is faster than IEEE 1394B and eSATA drives. Additionally, this performance meets or exceeds that of most PCI Express-to-USB 3.0 host boards in the same test environment."

"Most desktop and server motherboards in the market today offer PCI slots," said Robert McVay, chief technology officer, Fresco Logic Inc. "Designers seeking a cost-effective, low-power yet high-performance solution for these existing legacy platforms can implement this reference design and provide a path to upgrade the I/O on these platforms to state-of-the-art SuperSpeed USB, breathing new life into these older designs."

"From its inception nearly two decades ago, PCI has become the industry’s most widely deployed interconnect," said Brian O’Rourke, In-Stat principal analyst and author of multiple reports on both wired and wireless USB. "Add to the mix that USB 1.1, 2.0 and now 3.0 are built into virtually every computer and PC-connected consumer device worldwide, and a design tool such as this is essential to engineers responsible for maximizing PCI- and USB-based designs."

"While PCI Express deservedly draws a great deal of attention in the interconnect market, conventional PCI is still deployed in PCs and add-in cards," said Jag Bolaria, senior analyst at the Linley Group and co-author of the industry report A Guide to High-Speed Interconnects ($2,995). "Many companies are currently designing with PCI, and we estimate an installed base of approximately 400 million PCs that have at least one PCI slot. We envision PC makers will continue supporting PCI and accommodating low-cost legacy PCI-based adapters."

The PLX Reference Design Kit Includes:

• PCI-to-USB 3.0 host card
• Schematics (OrCAD)
• Layout Files (Allegro PCB and Gerber)
• Bill of materials
• Performance comparison data

The host card provided in the reference design kit is enabled by the PLX ExpressLane PEX 8112, a PCI-to-PCI Express (PCIe) bridge, which has been designed into thousands of consumer- and enterprise-focused products. The PEX 8112 provides performance bridging that is compliant with the PCI 1.0 specification and enables designers to migrate legacy PCI-based designs to the advanced serial PCIe. This two-port device is equipped with a single-lane PCIe port and a parallel bus segment supporting the conventional PCI operation.

The other key device on the host card is Fresco Logic’s FL1000, an USB-IF certified single-port PCI Express-to-USB 3.0 host controller chip. FL1000 is compliant with the USB 3.0 Specification Rev 1.0 and the xHCI (Extensible Host controller Interface) specification. FL1000 is also backward-compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1. Fresco Logic estimates that it will have shipped one-million USB host controllers through 2010.