Curtiss-Wright FHB5-PE1MWB04-00, User Manual, Page: 23 / 72

PRODUCT OVERVIEW
4-3
FibreXtreme User Guide Copyright 2017
4.1 Overview
The SL240 PCIe is a low cost, highly scalable, point-to-point, serial I/O interconnect that
maintains complete software compatibility with PCI. It transfers data at 5 Gbps per lane (2.5
Gbps for Gen 1), per direction, and will scale proportionately for performance by adding lanes to
the link.
The PCIe basic transmission unit consists of two pairs of wires, called a “lane.” Each pair allows
for unidirectional data transmission at 2.5 Gbps, so the two pairs combined provide 5 Gbps full
duplex communication, without the risk of transmission collision.
Lanes can be concatenated to provide scalable performance; so for example, combining two lanes
will yield 10 Gbps throughput.
The SL240 PCIe is an 8 lane (x8) board with a maximum of 1 Gigabyte per second of throughput
per transmit and receive directions. It incorporates many of the advanced protocol features in
PCI Express such as Automatic Lane Reversal.
The SL240 PCIe can interoperate with Curtiss-Wright’s existing FibreXtreme family of products.
These products include PCI, PCI Mezzanine (PMC), and a rehostable Common Mezzanine Card
(CMC).
The PCI, and PMC versions provide this link via the PCI bus. However, the SL240 PCIe utilizes
the PCIe bus for very high serial bandwidth and throughput applications where parallel-type buses
are no longer feasible. All of these variations interoperate completely on the link interface,
providing seamless integration between diverse platforms.
Figure 2-1 SL240 PCIe 100 MHz Card