Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Re: PCIe know-how?

[Eric Blossom]

On Sun, Mar 04, 2007 at 04:14:33PM -0500, Brian Padalino wrote:
> With regards to the PCIe interface, were you looking more at just
> getting a PHY transceiver and putting the MAC and other layers in the
> FPGA, or were you more interested in having a PCIe bridge chip that
> handles all of that for you?
> 
> I know Philips and TI have PCIe transceivers which work with Xilinx
> and Altera IP for the MAC layer, but what I really found interesting
> was a PCIe bridge chip from PLX technologies.  It's a relatively hefty
> BGA, but if you can place it properly the chip could really be a huge
> help.  No NDA's are required and the information can be found here.
> 
>    http://www.plxtech.com/products/expresslane/pex8311.asp

Interesting part.  Thanks for the pointer.


The Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT's and SXT's have (or will have) hard PCIe
endpoint blocks.  This puts most of endpoint IP into dedicated silicon.

                            
                  slices    DSP48 blocks  10/100/1000    Rocket IO
                            550 MHz       ethernet MACs  
  XC5VSX35T       5,400     192           4               8
  XC5VSX50T       8,160     288           4              12
  XC5VSX95T      14,720     640           4              16


I'm sure they're not cheap, but that's a lot of DSP resources ;)

http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon_solutions/fpgas/virtex/virtex5/Virtex-5_LX_LXT_SXT_Product_Table.pdf

Eric