PLX Technology has expanded its PCI Express Gen3 switch family with the addition of the PLX ExpressLane PEX8749 of 48 lanes and 18 ports, the PEX8733 of 32 lanes and 18 ports, and the PEX8725 of 24 lanes and 10 ports, which comply to the PCI Express Gen3 r1.0 specification. The switches are suitable for servers, storage and communications platforms. These additions bring the portfolio to 11 switches ranging from 12 to 48 lanes, and three to 18 ports. The switches have performancePAK features, including two non-transparency ports, four DMA (direct memory access) engines, two virtual channels, and up to 12 ports for spread spectrum clock isolation. The non-transparency feature enables host failover and redundancy. The spread spectrum clock isolation for each four- port of the switch can create large systems with each sub-system running its own clock, says the company. Also included is the support for PCI Express specification ECNs (engineering change notices) such as multicast, ACS (access control service), ARI (alternative routing-ID interpretation), atomic operations, and OBFF (optimised buffer flush and fill). The switches can be used to create Gen3 slots in a Gen2 platform.
