National-instruments Cabled PCI Express User Manual download pdf

Overview

Cabled PCI Express is a cabled serial bus used for high-performance interconnect of system components. It is based on

PCI Express and so provides a scalable, high-bandwidth, low-latency bus. In measurement and automation, cabled PCI

Express is very appealing to high-performance applications using a host PC for measurement processing and analysis.

For example, cabled PCI Express is currently used to connect a host PC to a PXI (PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation)

chassis with sustained transfer rates of nearly 800 Mbytes/s. The high performance, low cost, and easy connectivity of

cabled PCI Express makes it ideal for a number of measurement applications, and therefore, its applications is expected

to expand to serve more applications in the future. This paper examines cabled PCI express technology and both its

current and future application in measurement and automation systems.

What Is Cabled PCI Express?

Cabled PCI Express is the next generation peripheral bus for servers, desktops, and laptops. Cabled PCI Express will

have the following advantages:

• Wide use in standard PCs means low implementation costs

• High bandwidth – 4 Gigabytes / second

• Low latency – 300-700 nanoseconds

• Application software and operating systems run without changes due to no software changes from PCI model

• At least 15 standardized form factors including cabled PCI Express

• Only standard that is designed for chip-to-chip, board-to-board, and box-to-box applications

Cabled PCI Express is being defined by the PCI-SIG standards body as an extension of the PCI Express Base

specification. Extending PCI Express from box-to-box and over longer distances is the goal of cabled PCI Express.

Cabled PCI Express provides a simple yet high-performance bus for expanding PC and measurement I/O. Some

commercial applications of cabled PCI Express include interfaces on laptop or small form factor PC to connect

peripherals to laptops and split-system desktop PCs that can move the CPU box under the desk while keeping user I/O

easily accessible on top of it. The cabled PCI Express specification anticipates cables up to 7 meters long and still meet

the PCI Express timing requirements. It is nearing completion with the final release expected in the fall of 2006.

Products Available

National Instruments, as a leading innovator in applying commercial technology to test and measurement applications,

provides a line of remote controllers to connect VXI and PXI chassis to PCs, called MXI (Multiplatform eXtensions for

Instrumentation). The first MXI product, MXI-1, was used to connect VXI mainframes to PCs in 1991. The latest

products, MXI Express, use cabled PCI Express to connect a PXI chassis to a host PC. MXI Express remote controllers

are available now in x1 to connect to a PXI chassis and x4 configurations provide up to nearly 800 MB/s of sustained

throughput to PXI Express chassis. There is both a PCIe (see Figure 1) and ExpressCard (see Figure 2) host interface

for use with desktops and laptops, respectively. The primary purpose of using cabled PCI Express in MXI Express was

to take advantage of the higher performance, form factor options and lower costs of PCI Express.

Cabled PCI Express as a Standard

Interface for Virtual and Synthetic

Instruments

Document Version 1

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Summary of Contents

Page 1 - Instruments

OverviewCabled PCI Express is a cabled serial bus used for high-performance interconnect of system components. It is based onPCI Express and so provid

Page 2 - Document Version 1

Figure 1. NI MXI Express uses cabled PCI Express to connect a PC to PXIThe x1 MXI Express form factor shown above uses a PCI Express slot in a desktop

Page 3

Figure 2. NI MXI Express uses cabled PCI Express to connect a Laptop with ExpressCard to PXIWhen MXI-1 first launched in 1991 it provided 10MB/s bandw

Page 4

Figure 3. Cabled PCI Express makes MXI Express 80X higher bandwidth than MXI-1While bandwidth has dramatically increased, the costs of these links hav

Page 5

The focus of the SIWG has been primarily on the SI concepts as applied to RF stimulus and measurement systems. Dataintensive applications, like RF tes

Page 6 - Whitepapers

WhitepapersNI offers a Designing Next Generation Test Systems Developers Guide. This guide is collection of whitepapersdesigned to help you develop te

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National-instruments Cabled PCI Express User Manual

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