The GX1 offers a cost-effective PCIe Gen 3 switching solution via the CompactPCI Serial backplane. It comes with Express Switch or Express Fabric functionality. Some typical industrial applications include multi-CPU high speed video and image processing, supercomputing and virtualization. The GX1's final configuration depends on the end application. It is only available within a project context and cannot be ordered as a single standard product.
High-Speed Connection
The GX1 enables high speed serial point-to-point communication between the CPUs and between the CPUs and end point modules. Configurable data transfer rates can reach up to 985 MB/s per PCIe lane.
Flexible Configuration of Multi-Processor Systems
The switch allows connection of multiple endpoints and multiple CPUs. This way, it is possible to build powerful and cost-effective multi-processor systems. The switch ports can be configured flexibly using an application running on the root complex CPU. This way, the switch can be adapted to different backplane designs. No programming is required to set up the ports. Setup and diagnostics tools are available from the chip manufacturer.
Express Switch Functionality
The GX1 supports both multi-root and multi-host configuration. For multi-root configuration, the GX1 can be partitioned into four fixed virtual bridges supporting up to four root complexes. Each root complex is allowed to enumerate its own endpoints. Non-transparent bridging is not required in this case. For multi-host configuration, the primary host CPU is acting as a root complex enumerating all the endpoints and up to two additional secondary host CPUs connected over two non-transparent bridges. In this configuration, all host CPUs are able to communicate with all endpoints. Using the non-transparent bridging the primary CPU is able to share control, status and interrupt information with the secondary hosts. This allows more efficient load sharing in data intensive computing applications.
Express Fabric Functionality
GX1 can also be equipped with an Express Fabric chip which is especially suitable for complex non-hierarchical PCI Express topologies such as Mesh and Fat Tree. It supports single-root I/O virtualization which means that I/O can be shared among multiple hosts similar to the way Virtual Machines (VMs) share a piece of hardware on the same host. Express Fabric makes it possible to use more than 3 CPU boards in one configuration. The hosts communicate via Ethernet-like DMA.
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