600-2705 PCI Express Expansion System User’s Manual
1-1
Revision 1.0, February 2008
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The Cyclone Microsystems’ 2705 PCI Express Expansion System is a PCI Express (PCIe) Expansion
System that allows the user to add up to seven PCI Express add-in cards. Most PCs contain few PCI
Express slots making them poorly suited for embedded systems requiring a wealth of different I/O
boards and co-processor resources.
The 2705 PCI Express Expansion Systems permits system developers to use powerful and cost-
effective PCs as a foundation for a robust embedded system. The seven PCI Express slots are organized
as three x8 slots and four x4 slots. All expansion slots accommodate full length and full height cards and
are cooled by one 120 CFM and two 59 CFM fans. A 650 watt supply powers the rack mounted
expansion chassis.
The Expansion System supports 20 Gb/s bi-directional traffic to and from the host system and utilizes
non-blocking PCI Express switches for excellent peer-to-peer I/O bandwidth. For PCs with modern
BIOSs, the 2705 Expansion System is recognized by the host system upon boot-up, requires no
hardware specific drivers, and is entirely host operating system agnostic.
The 600-2705 system is composed from three elements: a PCI Express Host Bus Cable Adapter, an
Expansion System Cable and an Expansion Chassis. Our PCIe-409 Host Bus Cable Adapter is inserted
into a host computer’s x8 PCIe slot. PCIe expansion cable links the PCI host with the expansion chassis.
The expansion chassis is populated with the PCIe-414 Switched Backplane.
PCI Express is a high performance, general purpose I/O inter-connect defined for a wide variety of
computing and communication platforms. Key PCI attributes, such as its usage model, load-store archi-
tecture, and software interfaces are maintained, whereas its parallel bus implementation is replaced by a
serial interface. PCI Express take advantage of recent advances in point-to-point inter-connects, switch-
based technology, and packetized protocol to deliver new levels of performance.
