PLDA Announces XpressSWITCH - The Industry's First Compliant PCI Express Multiport Embedded Switch IP

XpressSWITCH is an exclusive IP that provides switching logic along with one upstream and multiple embedded or external downstream ports and is optimized for FPGA and ASIC designs

SAN JOSE, Calif., February 18, 2016 -- PLDA, the industry leader in PCI Express® controller IP solutions, today announced their new XpressSWITCH™ customizable multiport embedded switch IP for FPGA and ASIC designs. PLDA’s XpressSWITCH has achieved PCI Express (PCIe®) compliance based on interoperability testing during the recent PCI-SIG® Compliance Workshop in December 2015.

PLDA’s XpressSWITCH technology provides a customizable and scalable switch IP solution tailored for the needs of the PCIe switch marketplace. The PCIe® architecture has become a standard within storage/networking data centers due to the advantages it delivers in latency and performance. PCIe switches manage dataflow within a device, delivering the flexibility, scalability and configurability required to connect a large pool of drives or networks. Additionally, when used as an embedded PCIe switch, XpressSWITCH reduces the number of required components on a board which reduces power and bill of material costs.

Key benefits for the PLDA XpressSWITCH product include:

• BOM/Cost savings: PCIe Embedded Switch IP enables a minimized footprint and reduces the number of chips required on the board.
• Shorter time-to-market: PCIe Embedded Switch IP enables the reuse of existing design, reducing design time and creating independence from the SerDes Technology.
• Flexibility: The solution is highly configurable and scalable. For example, the designer can choose to implement up to 32 external or embedded Endpoints, and define for each port a different clock speed, data rate and throughput in order to optimize the footprint of the design.
• Demonstrated reliability: The solution has been integrated, tested and demonstrated on PLDA’s XpressKUS FPGA board running a Xilinx® Kintex® UltraScale™ device and has achieved PCI Express (PCIe®) compliance.
• Significant Latency, Power and Performance Improvements: XpressSWITCH delivers improvements in latency (using cut-through mode), optimization of power consumption (using embedded Endpoints), and better performance through a non-blocking architecture (using Peer-to-peer transfers between Endpoints).
• No requirement for software/firmware development: The switch will work without additional software or firmware thus reducing time-to-market and complexity.
• Engineered for both ASIC and FPGA: By designing for use in both FPGA and ASIC, PLDA enables our customers to prototype in FPGA and move seamlessly to ASIC with minimal change to the design.

"PLDA is the industry leader in PCIe-related products, with over 6,000 licenses for our advanced technologies,” said Stephane Hauradou, PLDA’s CTO. “With today’s announcement of our new switch technology combined with its PCIe compliance, we are ensuring our customers will continue to have access to best-in-class PCIe architecture with lower costs of integration."

According to Al Yanes, chairman and president, PCI-SIG, "We rely on the innovations of our member companies to drive the success of PCIe technology. We are pleased that PLDA has passed our PCIe 2.0 compliance testing, furthering the proliferation of PCIe products in the market."

Product Availability:

The PLDA XpressSWITCH is available today. Please visit PLDA online here: PCIe Switch IP

View the PLDA switch presentation :

Rabih Eid, Support Manager explains how to take advantage of PCIe Embedded Switch technology, reducing BOM, reusing existing designs, decreasing system power consumption and improving overall performance compared to an ASSP device. Please, visit the PLDA website here: PCIe Switch IP presentation

About PLDA

PLDA has been successfully delivering PCI and PCI Express IP for 20 years. With over 6,000 licenses, PLDA has established a vast customer base and the world’s broadest PCIe ecosystem. PLDA has maintained its leadership over four generations of PCI Express specifications, enabling customers to reduce risk and accelerate time to market for their ASIC and FPGA based designs. PLDA provides a complete PCIe solution with its IP cores, FPGA boards for ASIC prototyping, PCIe BFM/testbench, PCIe drivers and APIs. PLDA is a global company with offices in North America (San Jose, California) and Europe (France, Italy, Bulgaria).

About PCI-SIG

PCI-SIG is the consortium that owns and manages PCI specifications as open industry standards. The organization defines industry standard I/O (input/output) specifications consistent with the needs of its members. Currently, PCI-SIG is comprised of nearly 800 industry-leading member companies. To join PCI-SIG, and for a list of the Board of Directors, visit www.pcisig.com.