600-2708 PCI Express Expansion System User’s Manual
1-1
Revision 1.0, June 2010
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1
INTRODUCTION
The Cyclone Microsystems 2708 PCI Express Gen2 Expansion System is a PCI Express (PCIe)
expansion system that allows the user to add up to eight PCI Express add-in-cards. Most PCs contain
few PCI Express slots making them poorly suited for embedded systems requiring many different I/O
boards and co-processor resources.
The 2708 PCI Express Expansion System permits system developers to use powerful and cost-effective
PCs as a foundation for a robust embedded system. The eight PCI Express slots are organized as x1
slots with x4 connectors and are all Gen2 capable. Note when installed in a standard Cyclone rack
mounted chassis, only seven of the eight slots are available. A 680 watt supply powers the rack
mounted expansion chassis and is cooled by one 120 CFM and two 59 CFM fans.
The Expansion System supports 40 Gb/s bi-directional traffic to and from the host system. The system
utilizes repeaters and non-blocking PCI Express switches for excellent peer-to-peer I/O bandwidth. For
PCs with modern BIOSs, the 2708 Expansion System is recognized by the host system upon boot-up,
requires no hardware specific drivers and is entirely host operating system agnostic.
The 600-2708 system is composed of three elements: a PCI Express Host Bus Cable Adapter, an
Expansion System Cable and an Expansion Chassis. The PCIe-425 Host Bus Cable Adapter card is to
be inserted into a host computer’s x8 PCIe Gen2 slot. The x8 PCIe expansion cable links the PCI host
with the expansion chassis. The expansion chassis is populated with the PCIe-451 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.
