The Switchtec PAX advanced fabric Gen3 PCIe switch from Microsemi is said to provide fabric connectivity for scalable, multi-host systems as well as ‘just a bunch of flash’ supporting single root I/O virtualisation (SR-IOV), NVMe and multi-function endpoints.
According to the company, hyperconverged systems are evolving towards composable/disaggregated infrastructures such as rack scale architecture to meet the rapidly changing demands on resources and storage capacity of next-generation applications.
The switches are said to provide a scalable, low latency and cost-effective solution to the disaggregation of computing, networking GPUs and storage resources. Flexibly interconnected with configurable high-speed fabric links, the Switchtec family virtualises PCIe domains and SR-IOV endpoints.
The company claims system development is simplified through a fabric application programming interface and the ability to utilise off-the-shelf NVMe host drivers. The family comprises switches from 96 lanes to 24 lanes.
Features: PCIe fabric connectivity overcoming the limitations of the PCIe specification for rack scale multi-host systemsMulti-host sharing of SR-IOV and multifunction endpointsVirtualisation of PCIe domains and SR-IOV NVMe SSDsSoftware development kit for virtualisation of other SR-IOV endpoints, and for enclosure managementFlexible port bifurcation from x2 to x16 lanes per portHigh port density, with up to 48 portsAdvanced error reportingError containment for surprise-plug and unplug to prevent system crashesAdvanced diagnostics and debug features Separate Refclk Independent SSC for cabled PCIe and lower cost system designs |
