Microsemi PCIe Gen 3 fanout switch ICs handle up to 96 lanes

PCIe Gen 3 is perhaps the most important communication standard we have, and one that is critical to the internet and networking in general. That’s what makes PCIe switch ICs so important. Important for data center equipment, defense and industrial servers, workstations, test equipment, video production and broadcasting equipment, cellular infrastructure, access networks, metro networks, and core networking.

The Microsemi Switchtec PFX PCIe Gen3 fanout switch ICs are high-reliability PCIe Base Specification 3.1 8 Gt/s-compliant and support from 24 to 96 lanes — with up to 174 Gbytes/s switching capacity. They support PCIe-compliant link training and manual PHY configuration and have active power management capability.

The Switchtec family includes the PM8536, PM8535, PM8534, PM8533, PM8532, and PM8531. The flexible devices feature 24 virtual switch partitions, 48 non-transparent bridges (NTBs), hot- and surprise-plug controllers for each port, advanced error containment, and comprehensive diagnostics and debug capabilities. Up to 48 NTBs are assignable to any port and the ICs support multicast and 1+1 and N+1 failover mechanisms. They come in 27.0-mm or 37.5-mm square packages and are sampling now. An evaluation kit is available.