News Release
For more information, contact:
Lisa Sherwin
VTM Public Relations
Phone: 503-619-0425
lsherwin@vtm-inc.com
Twenty-Five Leading Infrastructure Suppliers Announce Product Support
for PCI-X 2.0
All the Elements for a Successful PCI-X 2.0 Launch Are Now in Place
PORTLAND, OR, - July 15, 2002 - The PCI-SIG, the Special Interest Group
responsible for PCI, PCI-X and PCI Express industry-standard I/O
technologies, announced today that twenty-five leading suppliers of PCI
infrastructure have firm plans to support and enable the impending PCI-X 2.0
specification. PCI-X 2.0 is a high-performance extension to the PCI-X
specification that offers next-generation performance and backward
compatibility to current PCI-based systems, and will be released as an
industry standard later this month.
Infrastructure support for PCI-X 2.0 will include: technical training for
design engineering; intellectual property of pre-designed silicon blocks;
programmable gate arrays for quick product development; software test
suites; Basic Input Output Software (BIOS); silicon I/O buffers, clocks and
integrated circuits; connectors and testers. The supporting companies
include: Agilent Technologies, Altera, American Megatrends, Artisan,
Cypress, Foxconn, FuturePlus® Systems, General Software, HP, IBM
Microelectronics, Integrated Circuit Systems, LSI Logic Corporation,
MindShare, Molex Incorporated, NEC, New Wave, NurLogic Design, Pericom
Semiconductor, Phoenix Technologies, Philips, Synopsys, Tektronix, Texas
Instruments, TransEDA and Tyco Electronics.
“Server platforms, in particular, are ready to jump on the PCI-X 2.0
bandwagon to increase their I/O bandwidth as much as possible, as soon as
possible,” said Tony Pierce, PCI-SIG chairman. “We’ve already seen support
demonstrations from companies that make chipsets and add-in adapter cards,
and now with this announcement, the rest of the infrastructure has fallen
into place.”
About PCI-X 2.0
PCI-X 2.0 is a high-performance extension to the PCI Local Bus specification
that facilitates connections to add-in cards for 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 10
Gigabit Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI, Serial ATA (SATA), 4x and 12x
InfiniBand, RAID and cluster interconnects for servers and workstations.
PCI-X 2.0 defines two new versions of PCI-X add-in cards: PCI-X 266 and
PCI-X 533. The first, PCI-X 266 runs at speeds up to 266 MegaTransfers per
second using Double Data Rate (DDR) techniques, enabling sustainable PCI
bandwidth of more than 2.1 Gigabytes/second. PCI-X 533 runs at speeds up to
533 MegaTransfers per second using Quadruple Data Rate (QDR) techniques
enabling bandwidth of more than 4.3 Gigabytes/second. The specification also
provides increased reliability through Error Checking and Correction (ECC™).
PCI-X 2.0 will provide customers with needed I/O bandwidth along with
investment protection because of its backward compatibility with existing
systems.
PCI-X 2.0 TRAINING
Don Anderson, Vice President, MindShare
“We provided comprehensive design engineering training programs on the
first revision of PCI-X, and wrote a detailed text book to help enable the
transition to PCI-X. Now we are pleased to offer new custom classes to help
our customers make the transition to PCI-X 2.0. We believe that our programs
give engineers the knowledge and confidence that can result in weeks being
trimmed from the design and verification cycle.”
PCI-X 2.0 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Ken Jansen, Director ASIC and Chipset Development, HP Industry-Standard Servers
"HP has long been committed to delivering enterprise customers
industry-standard server solutions that address critical business issues
such as investment protection, bandwidth optimization, and ease of use. As
the extension of existing PCI-X bus standards, PCI-X 2.0 will optimize
performance, cost, and resources, without requiring customers to
dramatically change their existing infrastructures. HP's investment in PCI-X
bus standards continues to enable us to deliver value through innovation. HP
initiated a licensing program, called 'Golden Master,' for PCI-X 1.0, in
which industry partners benefit from a reference design. The components
available to licensees include bus functional model, verilog models,
documentation, and technical support. The Golden Master program proved to be
a tremendous benefit to the industry enabling rapid deployment of PCI-X
technology."
Dave Jones, Vice President and General Manager, Storage and Computing
ASICs Division, LSI Logic
Corp.
"LSI Logic's extensive high-speed interface engineering capability,
industry-leading host bus adapter customer base and repeated success with
PCI and PCI-X will provide customers with an advantage in developing PCI-X
2.0 products. The industry recognizes there are timing and electrical
challenges in implementing PCI-X 2.0; however, as a key contributor to the
PCI-X 2.0 standard, LSI Logic is providing the necessary building blocks and
support to overcome those challenges. LSI Logic is offering the PCI-X 2.0
interface in our Gflx 0.11-micron technology."
Ed Bard, Director of DesignWare Marketing, Synopsys
"As a leading supplier of standards-based verification IP, Synopsys is
enhancing our popular PCI/PCI-X verification solution to encompass PCI-X
2.0. The solution will include master and slave bus-transaction models that
are used to initiate and respond to PCI-X bus transactions, and a monitor to
check for protocol violations. The PCI-X 2.0 solution will be included in
the DesignWare IP library and made available later this year."
GATE ARRAYS
Justin Cowling, IP Marketing Director, Altera Corporation
"Designers implementing PCI-X 2.0 in programmable logic can take advantage
of Altera's dedicated DDR and QDR gate array circuitry to maximize
performance. Our comprehensive suite of high-performance interface IP will
enable customers to develop PCI-X 2.0 designs with the shortest
time-to-market."
TEST SUITES
Scott Winick, Director of System Verification, TransEDA
"Our PCI-X verification suite provides configurable agents and monitors
that can be used in any simulation, as well as a formal property library, an
intelligent controller and simulation test suites. This complete
verification IP portfolio for PCI-X 1.0 and PCI-X 2.0 buses speeds system
verification by allowing engineers to focus effort on their design instead
of on developing models of standard interfaces."
BIOS
Bill Clark, Strategic Account Manager, American Megatrends
"AMIBIOS, already supporting a wide range of PCI specifications, will
enable PC-based platforms to achieve the full benefits of increased system
I/O bandwidth introduced by PCI-X 2.0."
Steve Jones, Founder and Chief Technical Officer, General Software
"General Software is committed to its embedded x86 customers who migrate
to newer technologies. Just as General Software has packaged
industry-standard functionality such as PCI and PCI-X into its embedded
firmware products, our support for PCI-X 2.0 will follow in the same way. Of
key importance to embedded customers is that PCI-X 2.0 is provided in
firmware thus minimizing the time-to-market through easy deployment build
options, while minimizing maintenance costs."
Alan McCann, Sr. Vice President & General Manager, Corporate
Marketing & Products Division, Phoenix
Technologies Ltd.
"Phoenix Technologies developed the industry's first BIOS support when
PCI was introduced nearly ten years ago. As the industry's leading supplier
of PCI-enabling firmware and an active member of the PCI-SIG, we have helped
our manufacturing customers ship systems that meet PCI's most complex
challenges, including providing support for deeply nested bus topologies,
systems with mixtures of PCI and PCI-X devices, and Hot-Plug PCI systems.
Phoenix looks forward to supporting the introduction of the PCI-X 2.0
specification and the greatly enhanced performance it offers for computer
system manufacturers and customers."
I/O BUFFERS
Neal Carney, Vice President of Marketing, Artisan
"Artisan Components has supported PCI and PCI-X with compliant I/O
products in multiple foundry processes. We intend to support PCI-X 2.0 in
the same fashion as customer adoption accelerates."
Richard Busch, Director of Storage Networking, IBM Microelectronics
"The movement to high-speed I/O solutions demands more bandwidth from the
interfaces used to connect I/O subsystems to the processor complex. With the
adoption of PCI-X 2.0 the I/O bus should not limit system performance for
many years to come."
Hiro Hashimoto, Senior Vice President and Executive General Manager of
the System LSI Operations Unit, NEC Electronic Devices, NEC Corp.
"NEC has already added a PCI-X 2.0 cell to its 0.13-micron CB-12 ASIC
library. The new cell required only minor modifications to our existing
PCI-X 1.0 cell, so customers using the new macro will benefit from a proven,
robust design and the extensive manufacturing capability of a world leader
in this advanced technology."
Lisa Lipscomb, Vice President of Marketing, NurLogic Design, Inc.
"PCI has been an important part of our high-bandwidth product portfolio,
which already includes PCI 33, PCI 66 and PCI-X 1.0 in 0.25 through 90nm.
Considering PCI-X 2.0 a key future technology, we felt it was important to
be one of the first to market. We will have our PCI-X 2.0 I/O buffers
available in August for 0.13-micron process technology. By using PCI-X 2.0,
designers are left to focus on the product features that make their designs
unique."
CLOCKS
Paul Cheng, Business Unit Director, Timing Technology Division, Cypress
"Cypress offers a family of timing products to support PCI-X 2.0. Our
CY2304NZ, C9530 and C9531 are ideal timing solutions for PCI-X
applications."
Ram Iyer, Director of Marketing, Integrated
Circuit Systems
"ICS takes pride in providing complete and effective timing solutions for
leading edge computing technologies. We have in production, over 20
different clocking solutions to support all PCI technologies from 32-bit /
33 MHz PCI, up to PCI-X 533. These products offer significant flexibility to
system designers."
Joe Kochanski, International Product Manager - Clocks & Memory
Interface Products, Philips
"Our PCK2002PLPW PCI Buffer provides ideal support for PCI-X 2.0 buses
and will support the entire range of PCI-X buses. We also work closely with
leading OEMs and chipset vendors to ensure compatibility on this part device
type as well as clock synthesizers such as PCK2022RA, which are now in
volume production."
Raj Gupta, Marketing Manager of CDC Product, Texas Instruments
"We are very excited to provide Clock Synthesizer Circuits (CDC950) and
Clock Buffers (CDCV304) which support PCI-X 2.0. These devices provide
designers with improved timing budget, and we continue to be a leader in
delivery of high-performance Clock Distributor Circuits."
INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
David Raun, VP, Strategic Marketing, Pericom Semiconductor
"As a key supplier of silicon solutions to the leading server
manufacturers, Pericom is committed to supporting PCI, PCI-X, and PCI-X 2.0
with timing solutions, switches, buffers, and bridge products."
Steve Hemmah, Product Marketing Engineer, Texas Instruments
"Working with industry leaders, Texas Instruments is developing
state-of-the-art mixed-signal hot-plug power controller chips geared
specifically to the high-availability requirements of today's latest
mission-critical servers. Its advanced architecture, like that of the
servers themselves, takes full advantage of the latest technologies and
PCI-X 1.0 and 2.0 specifications." CONNECTORS
David Pao, Product Manager, Foxconn
Electronics
"As a top connector manufacturer in the world, Foxconn fully supports PCI-X
2.0. Production volume is available as of Q2 2002. Sample product is
available by request. Please contact our distributor or regional sales
office for more information."
Bill Kysiak, Product Manager, Molex
Incorporated
"Molex plans to fully support PCI-X 2.0 with its connectors and is well
prepared to meet market demand for this product. As Molex currently produces
the connector for the 64-bit PCI, we are in a solid position to support the
PCI-X 2.0 standard."
Greg Sites, Director of Product Management, Tyco Electronics
"As a leader in the connector industry, we will support PCI-X 2.0. In fact,
we already have this connector in production - since it is the same
connector that is used to support PCI and PCI-X 1.0 - and we are ready to
provide customers with the PCI-X 2.0 connector."
TESTERS
Perry Keller, Computer I/O Bus Analysis Program Manager, Agilent Technologies
"Agilent has long been a leader in providing the physical layer,
analysis, and exerciser test tools that teams rely on for PCI design
validation and compliance test. We are excited that we will be able to
continue this with PCI-X 2.0. The first PCI-X 2.0 designs are expected this
year and Agilent has been working actively with leading OEMs and the PCI-SIG
to ensure our tools are ready for 1st silicon turn-on."
Gregg Buzard, Strategic Programs Manager, FuturePlus® Systems
"FuturePlus® Systems has been providing PCI test tools since 1992 and was
the first to provide debug and analysis for PCI-X at 133 MHz. We have a long
history of early support for high-speed buses and are committed to providing
test solutions for PCI-X 2.0 to help leading-edge companies quickly bring
the power of this new standard to the market."
Mark Briscoe, Logic Analyzer Marketing Manager, Tektronix Inc.
"As a test and measurement leader, Tektronix provides high-performance
instruments that support emerging standards and technologies, such as PCI-X
2.0. Our logic analyzers and oscilloscopes can be easily integrated to
provide a seamless analog/digital toolset, necessary for testing and
validating high-speed PCI-X 2.0 signals."
Ken Graham, New Products Manager, New
Wave
"New Wave's current support for V1.0 of the PCI-X bus is used with
Tektronix logic analyzers to provide high-speed timing and state analysis of
the PCI-X bus. We are committed to supporting PCI-X 2.0 in the same
way."
About the PCI-SIG
The PCI-SIG is the industry organization that owns and manages PCI
specifications as open industry standards. The organization defines and
implements new industry standard I/O (Input/Output) specifications as the
industry’s local I/O needs evolve. The PCI Special Interest Group was formed
in 1992, and the organization became a nonprofit corporation, officially
named "PCI-SIG" in the year 2000. Currently, more than 780 industry-leading
companies are active PCI-SIG members. The PCI-SIG's current directors are
employed by the following PCI-SIG member companies: Adaptec, AMD, HP, IBM,
Intel, Microsoft, Phoenix Technologies, ServerWorks and TI. For more
information about the PCI-SIG and PCI-SIG membership benefits, contact the
PCI-SIG by phone, at (800) 433-5177 (within the United States), or by fax at
(503) 297-1090, or visit the PCI-SIG web site at:
www.pcisig.com.
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