Docking Station Application

The PEX 8606 is ideal for IO expansion applications. The

support for SSC isolation as well as its low power

consumption makes it an ideal candidate for peripheral

expansion. Figure 3 below shows a block diagram for a

docking station. With PCI Express slots, the IO subsystem

can be expanded in order to extend the peripheral capabilities

of a notebook PC.

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Figure 3. Docking Station

Control Planes for Large Systems

Control for larger systems can be accomplished with a bigger

switch. However, in many cases where multiple PCIe ports

are available on the CPU, multiple switches can be used in

order to balance the traffic as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Control Planes for Large Systems

Embedded Control Planes

The PEX 8606 is well suited for embedded control plane

applications. An example of such application is a packet

processing module, as shown in Figure 5. In this example, the

FPGAs and ASICs implement an x1 PCI Express Interface.

With its high port count, the PEX 8606 can provide

connectivity to a high number of FPGAs and ASICs for a

robust packet processing communications sub-system.

Figure 5. Packet Processing Module

Intelligent Adapter Card

The PEX 8606 supports the non-transparency feature.

Figure 6 illustrates a host system using an intelligent adapter

card.

Figure 6. Intelligent Adapter Usage

In this figure, the CPU on the Mezzanine card is isolated from

the host CPU. The PEX 8606 non-transparent port allows the

two CPUs to be isolated but communicate with each other

through various registers that are designed in the PEX 8606

for that purpose. The host CPU can dynamically re-assign

both the upstream port and the non-transparent port of

PEX 8606 allowing the system to be reconfigured.

Active-Standby Failover Model

The PEX 8606 supports applications requiring dual host, host

failover applications through the non-transparency feature.

Figure 7 illustrates a dual host system with an active and

standby processor configuration.

The redundancy of the host and the fabric can be achieved

through many possible configurations using NTB function of

PEX 8606. In the configuration shown below Processor A is

the primary active host of the PCI Express system. Processor

B acts as the backup Host. In the case of a failure on Processor

A, application software is instructed to migrate the PCI

Express system to Processor B. Consequently, Processor B

becomes the active host and Processor A can be replaced as

the backup Host.

Figure 7. Active-Standby Host Mode