PCIe2-2712 PCI Express Gen2 Expansion System User’s Manual
1-1
Revision 1.0, February 2015
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The Cyclone Microsystems PCIe2-2712 is a PCI Express (PCIe) Gen2 Expansion System that supports
the addition of up to ten PCI Express I/O cards to a single host computer. Most host computers contain
few PCI Express slots making them poorly suited for building complex systems requiring many
different I/O boards and co-processor resources. The PCIe2-2712 Expansion System has been designed
for applications requiring multiple PCIe I/O and co-processing resources.
PCIe2-2712 system is composed of three elements: a PCI Express Host Bus-to-Cable Adapter, an
Expansion cable, and an Expansion Chassis. The PCIe2-2712 system can be configured with either a x8
or a x16 interface between the host computer and the expansion backplane. For the x8 configuration, a
PCIe2-425 Host Bus-to-Cable Adapter card is inserted into a host computer’s x8 PCIe Gen2 slot. A x8
PCIe external cable links the PCIe host to the expansion chassis. For the x16 configuration, a PCIe2-
426 Host Bus-to-Cable Adapter card is inserted into a host computer’s x16 PCIe Gen2 slot. A x16 PCIe
external cable links the PCIe host to the expansion chassis. The expansion chassis is populated with a
ten slot x8 switched backplane, an up-stream cable adapter (either x8 or x16), and, optionally, a system
monitor board. All expansion slots use open back x8 connectors which accommodate full length cards
with a x1, x4, x8, or x16 PCIe interface. The backplane and add-in cards are cooled by four 77 CFM
fans. The PCIe2-2712 is avaliable with either a 3240 W or 2180 W N+1 redundant power supply in a
5U chassis, or a 1250 W standard ATX supply in a 4U chassis.
The PCIe-2712 Expansion System supports 160 or 80 Gb/s bi-directional traffic to and from the host
system. The system utilizes low latency PCIe Bus repeaters and non-blocking PCI Express switches for
excellent peer-to-peer I/O bandwidth. For host computers with modern BIOSs, the PCIe2-2712
Expansion System is recognized by the host system upon boot-up, requires no hardware specific
drivers, and is entirely host operating system independent.
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.
