Amfeltec Squid Family Bifurcation Option With Half-Height (2U) PCIe Carrier Board

Amfeltec Corporation announced the launch of its latest addition to the Squid carrier board family: the cost-effective, half-height (2U) PCIe Gen 3 Carrier Board supports up to four M.2 PCIe SSD modules.

Bifurcation allows to use the x16 PCIe interface by splitting it into four x4 PCIe interfaces (x4/x4/x4/x4) in the motherboard. Each of x4 PCIe interfaces then connects to the respective M.2 module, mounted on the carrier board. This carrier boards themselves are based on the same patented assembly concept as the entire Squid family (U.S. Pat. 9,996,494, additional patent pending). The board is one-slot-wide, and it is located in the middle of the (x16) PCIe slot. Four M.2 circuits (M-key) can be mounted on both sides of the carrier boards (component and soldering), and can accommodate standard M.2 SSD with x4 PCIe Gen 3.

“Amfeltec Corporation continues its trend of innovation with this unique concept: a bifurcation-dependent carrier board that allows a user to place the maximum number of different modules on both sides of a PCIe carrier board, without violating the actual PCIe standard,” says Michael Feldman, president and CTO, Amfeltec, “This new carrier board brought our patented assembly structure to the cost-effective class of the carrier board – this is due to this Squid Board being compatible only with a motherboard that has bifurcation support.“

Once the motherboard is configured (in BIOS) to split the x16 PCIe bus four ways, the OS will recognize each module as an individual HDD, and can combine them as a RAID. Any M.2 PCIe SSD modules with M-key can then be placed on the carrier board; supported sizes are 2260, 2280 or 22110.

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Squid family includes other M.2 carrier boards:

SKU-086-34 (x16 or x8 PCIe Gen 3, for up to four M.2 SSD modules) (2U)
SKU-086-32 (x4 or x8 PCIe Gen 3, for up to two M.2 SSD modules) (2U)
SKU-086-31 (x4 or x1 PCIe Gen 3, for one M.2 SSD module) (1U)
SKU-086-01 (x16 or x8 PCIe Gen 2, for up to four M.2 SSD modules for Mac Pro, 1st generation) (2U)