Backplane tackles bandwidth-intensive applications

The new xPB-13E9P3 backplane offers PCI and PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 2 support for full-height 4U systems.

With 32 PCIe lanes, the PICMG 1.3-compliant backplane tackles bandwidth-intensive applications with its cost-effective and densely packed design for use with standard PCIe and PCI extension cards.

In order to support any standard PCIe extension card, an integrated non-blocking switch doubles the 16 PCIe lanes from the system host board (SHB) to the four PCIe x4 Gen 2 slots and the PEG slot on the backplane.

The switch is configurable via software, allowing each of the x4 slots to be individually populated with x1, x2 or x4 input/output (I/O) cards.

The PCIe bandwidth can also be routed directly to dedicated ports without disturbing the CPU board.

The three PCI slots of the Kontron xPB-13E9P3 allow original equipment manufacturers to leverage existing PCI extension cards.

The xPB-13E9P3 backplane provides a cost-efficient solution for applications with extreme bandwidth requirements.

The full-size backplane is designed for high-throughput use (5.0GT/s per PCIe lane) with the latest frame grabbers, graphics and network cards.

The PICMG 1.3 backplane also provides ample resources for applications where multiple video cards are required, such as in test and measurement, digital mock-up and simulation.

This makes the new backplane a suitable host for a GPGPU system for cost-efficient, high-performance embedded computing tasks (HPECs).

All these applications benefit from the PICMG 1.3 specification, which combines the cost efficiency of a motherboard-based solution with the high bandwidth of a complex and densely packed serial switched backplane system design, according to the company.

The Kontron xPB-13E9P3 offers one PEG (PCIe x16), four PCIe x4 and four PCIe x1 as well as the PICMG 1.3 slot for the SHB.

Connections for four USB 2.0 ports, two SATA ports and one LAN port round out the interface offerings of the PICMG 1.3 backplane.