96-LANE PCI EXPRESS SWITCH SUPPORTS FOUR HOST PARTITIONS

摘要

PLX Technology's latest Gen 3 PCI Express switches deliver lots of lanes and ports. They also can be shared with up to four hosts to provide a virtual switch environment. They support non-transparent (NT) bridging ports that allow multiple hosts accessed to shared peripherals. Some processors now support NT, but switched-based NT enables any host to operate in a failover environment. The PEX 8796 switch supports 96 lanes and 24 ports. The PEX 8780 supports 80 lanes and 20 ports. And, the PEX 8764 supports 64 lanes and 16 ports (see the table). All of the switches can handle up to four hosts that support two NT ports, permitting dual failover configurations in a single switch (see the figure).