PXH822 User’s Guide –
Dolphin Interconnect Solutions
Page 7
Cable Ports and Connections
The PXH822 is designed to support both long and short cables and comes with two types of PCIe link tuning
parameters. The default configuration supports cables between 0.5 and 3 meters or PCIe Gen3 fiber cables
(AOC). To use cables longer than 3 meters, please use DIP-Switch DIP4 to enable the long cable tuning. If you
are connecting the PXH822 to a compliant target device not designed by Dolphin, other settings or limitations
may apply.
The PXH822 cable connector is compliant to the SFF-8644 industry specification and supports standard x4/x8
Mini-SAS HD copper cables or x4/x8 PCI Express 3.0 cables compliant to the PCIe External Cabling Specification
3.0. Four x4 or two x8 cables are needed for full PCIe x16 connectivity.
Cable ports
The PXH822 has a quad SFF-8644 connector. Each port implements 4 PCIe lanes. The ports are
numbered as shown in Figure 1 Front panel below. The black thick line indicates the position of the
PCB.
PCI Express 3.0 cables
When used with cables compliant to the new PCIe External Cable standard 3.0, the PXH822 card will transmit
a CMI Reset message downstream. The card can be connected to a PXH822 in Target mode or any PCIe device
compliant to the new cable standard.
MiniSAS-HD cables
When used with standard MiniSAS-HD cables that does not support the new CMI functionality, the onboard
CPU will synthetize a PCIe #CPERST and forward it to the downstream PXH822 card. CWAKE and CPOWERON is
not supported using standard MiniSAS-HD cables.
Active Optical Cables (AOC)
The PXH822 card is compliant with active fiber optic cables available from Dolphin (Part no: MSFCxxx). No special configuration is
required. Up to 100-meter fiber cable is supported. CWAKE and CPOWERON is not supported using standard AOC cables.
CMI Functionality
The 8.10 firmware release supports the following CMI operations:
•
Publishes card and CMI status information in readable memory map
•
Supports sending CMI reset and power status messages
•
Supports receiving CMI reset and status messages
•
Supports receiving indicators (LED/messages).
REAR-IO
The PXH822 card is designed to support REAR-IO. Please contact Dolphin for more information.
Figure 1 Front
panel face plate
