PEX9700 Series Switch Chips
Managed PCI Express Switches Based on
ExpressFabric® Technology
Product Brief
Converge Servers and IO controllers with PCIe
• Create cost-effective high-availability hyperscale systems by enabling
communication between in-rack hosts and endpoints using PCIe
• Simplify connectivity while providing the highest PCIe switching
performance available for data center servers, storage, and networks
• Reduce latency, system complexity, and power consumption
by up to 50% in data-intensive environments
• Take advantage of industry-first features for most demanding hyper-
converged, NVMe and rack scale systems
Broadcom PEX9700 switches allow customers to build high performance, low
latency, scalable, cost-effective PCI Express-based fabrics. The switches enable
I/O sharing with standard SR-IOV or multifunction capability, allowing multiple
hosts or Nodes to reside on a single PCIe-based network. Hosts communicate
through Tunneled Window Connection (TWC), a special low latency host-to-
host communication capability for short packets.
General Features
• State-of-the-art switch fabric
−Sharing I/Os among multiple
hosts
− Low latency TWC
• Any port can be a host port or
Downstream (device) Port
Shared I/O Using Standards
PEX9700 switches allow the Virtual Functions (VFs) of SRIOV endpoints
(such as an Broadcom MegaRAID® SAS controller) to be shared and
assigned to multiple hosts concurrently. Each host can enumerate its
assigned functions using standard BIOS and OS software and use them with
unmodified vendor-supplied drivers. The use of standard system software
minimizes software support costs.
• Works with standard PCIe end-
points and hosts – and software,
as well as with existing application
software
• MSI-X support
• Allows flexible fabric topologies
Software-Defined Fabric
The switches are built on a hybrid hardware/software platform that offers high
configurability and flexibility in regards to the number of hosts, end-points,
and PCIe slots. The critical pathways have direct hardware support, enabling
the fabric to offer non-blocking, line speed performance with features such
as I/O sharing. The solution is completed by management processor that
communicates with platform management via API and/or CLI. The solution
offers an innovative approach to setup and control, making use of an off-
chip management CPU (mCPU) to initialize the PEX9700 switch, configure
the routing tables, handle errors, Hot-Plug events, and enable the solution to
extend the capabilities without modifying the system software.
Key Advantages
• PCI Express Switches
−12 to 97 Lanes with Integrated
on-chip SerDes
−5 to 25 Independent ports
−Designate any Port as the
Upstream Port
− Low-power SerDes (under 90
mW per Lane)
Tunneled Window Connection (TWC)
TWC allows short messages to be sent from one host to another in a very low
latency manner, and without the overhead associated with DMA.
− Device-Specific Relaxed Ordering
− Port configuration
− Dedicated management port
for mCPU
PEX9700 Series Switch Chips