Trenton Technology Blog

PCI Express Gen 2 Cards – What’s Available Today?

In a past blog, we talked about the evolution of PCI Express and specifically what advantages PCI Express Gen2 or PCIe 2.0 offers an industrial computer system over the previous PCI Express 1.1 interface technology.  The main advantage of PCI Express 2.0 is a doubling of the card-to-card interface speeds, which enables some impressive system data throughput improvements.  Unlike many new computer technologies, the backwards compatibility with older PCIe 1.1 boards simplifies the PCIe 2.0 system integration task.  PCI Express 2.0 interface connectivity is certainly becoming more common in the latest embedded motherboards, single board computers, system host boards and backplanes. 

The question is, are there enough different types of PCI Express 2.0 COTS option cards available today that will enable us to take full advantage of PCIe 2.0 in various embedded computing applications? 

To try to answer this question, I went on a simple web search for different types of PCIe 2.0 option cards.  Using some basic keyword phrases, a number of different PCI Express Gen 2 COTS option cards were found in just about an hour of looking.   

 

PCIe 2.0 Board Type	Brief Description	Model Name/Number	Vendor
Remote Graphics Card	A variety of single-slot & dual-slot PCIe 2.0 video card that enables two remote monitors	FirePro™ RG220 FirePro™ V8800 plus other select FirePro-series boards	ATI
Graphics Processing Unit	A variety of single & dual-slot PCIe 2.0 video cards that provide enhanced graphics and multi-monitor display capabilities.	GeForce 9600 GT GeForce 8800 GT plus other select GeForce-series boards	NVIDIA
Eight-port SATA+SAS Bus Adapter	This single-slot PCIe 2.0 card is used in data storage arrays and can drive up to 256 SAS or SATA devices	LSI™ SAS 9211-8i	LSI Corporation
SATA Host Adapter	These single-slot PCIe 2.0 cards support multiple eSATA or SATA III ports	S3-PCIE1XG201 S3-PCIE1XG202	IOI Technology Corporation
USB 3.0 Expansion Card	This single-slot PCIe 2.0 card adds two additional USB 1.1/2.0/3.0 ports to the system design	PDU3	Transcend
FPGA Accelerator Card	A single-slot PCIe 2.0 card with multiple-FPGA capability	PCIe-280	Nallatech Interconnect Systems Inc.
Protocol Test Card	This single-slot PCIe 2.0 card is a PCIe 2.0 compliance test board	PE020AGA-X	LeCroy

 

Option card technology always seems to lag processor card innovations, but I was happy to uncover quite a bit of variety in available PCI Express 2.0 option cards.  Obviously, there are a lot of PCIe Gen2 video and graphics cards available, but you can see that other card types are also available.  Trenton’s currently available JXT6966, JXTS6966, NTM6900, WTM7026, BPC7041 and BPC7009 are examples of PCIe 2.0 embedded computing hardware that supports all the different COTS card technologies including the PCI Express Gen2 cards listed above. 

For more information on the details of PCI Express visit our website or see www.pcisig.com. 

 

This submission is from Jim Renehan, Director of Marketing.

Trenton Technology ships JXT6966 SBC with Intel® Jasper Forest CPUs

The latest Intel® Xeon® C5500 Series (i.e. Jasper Forest) are a new generation of quad-core processors specifically built for high-performance computing in long-life embedded system applications. 

The Intel® Xeon® LC5528 offers some compelling industrial computer advantages when deployed on a dual-processor single board computer like the Trenton JXT6966.  Here are a couple of LC5528 processor parameters that you may find useful in your next rackmount computer / industrial server system design:

• Better Thermals – Maximum Thermal Design Power (TDP) is only 60W
• Better Thermals II – Maximum T_case excursion temp = 85° C with T_case nominal being 70° C
• Multi-Core / Multi-Thread Architecture – Quad-Core processor with Intel® Hyper-Threading results in eight processing cores being available for multi-threaded software applications.

These LC5528 processor advantages, coupled with the inherent Jasper Forest processor advantages of direct DDR3 memory interfaces and PCI Express® 2.0 links to the CPU enable your system to operate faster and consume less power than previous generation single board computer and processor technology.

We have a Trenton’s JXT6966 product video posted on You Tube that steps you through the capabilities of the JXT6966.  The video covers SBC:

• Performance benchmarks
• Available I/O for the system
• Alignment within a backplane
• Mechanical layout benefits
• System design advantages

Application information for the JXT6966 single board computer plus additional system integration details on our new BPC7009 and BPC7041 PCI Express 2.0 backplanes are found on the Trenton website.  If you prefer, Trenton’s TSC4500 is a complete 4U rackmount computer system already integrated with a JXT6966 SBC and a BPC7041 backplane with additional options available to meet your specific configuration requirements. 

 For additional information on single board computer form factors and the advantages they provide in industrial server designs see:

http://www.picmg.org/v2internal/SHB_Express.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer

 This submission is by Jim Renehan, Director of Marketing

Customer-Driven Solutions vs. Standard Systems

If you’ve visited the Trenton website recently, you may have noticed two new product headings on some of our rackmount computer pages – Customer-Driven Solutions and Standard Systems.  The 2U Rackmount page is a good example, and while these titles may be new, the philosophy is not.

For over 30 years Trenton has designed and manufactured cutting-edge single board computers and backplanes based on the latest generation of industry standards and Intel processors.  Year after year Trenton has introduced ‘standard’ products to address the critical needs of industrial and embedded computing applications across a diverse range of industries.

But Trenton has always been a customer-driven company.   From adding enhanced functionality to a single board computer, designing a unique slot configuration on a backplane, or customizing the BIOS, Trenton’s engineering expertise has always been focused on satisfying the needs of our customers.

So why should anything change with the introduction of fully integrated rackmount computer systems?

When you see the Standard Systems heading, it denotes a pre-certified configuration.  These systems have been built, tested and qualified to work in a wide variety of applications, from military and defense to video processing, industrial automation, communications, medical, simulation and virtualization.  As a result, we can offer expedited delivery while providing Trenton’s world-class customer support.

Systems listed under the Customer-Driven Solutions heading are just that, system configurations initially designed to meet the requirements of a customer application, but now featured on the website due to their ability to satisfy the needs of any industry which demands high-performance computing solutions.

Customer-Driven Options Include:

• Processor, memory or drive upgrades
• Additional SBC features & functionality
• Customization of system BIOS
• Rackmount enclosure modifications
• Unique PCI or PCIe slot requirements
• Multi-segmented backplanes
• CE or UL testing

 

 

Whatever your computing needs, rely on the company that remains focused on designing and building high-performance, rugged solutions for our customer’s most demanding applications – Trenton.