RE: PCI Compliance of PLX's PCI 9054 I/O buffers

["O'Shea, David J" <david.j.oshea@intel.com>]

It struck me from the original poster's comments that
he and (not PLX) was quite correct about the non-compliance
of the PLX device despite any marketing-eeze presented below about
compliance workshops, buffer designs, etc.

His comments correctly went to the lack of proper clamp
diodes on the device.   These are necessary to protect other
devices on the bus, and to protect the system power supply.
They are not necessarily just for the protection of the PLX's
own I/O driver/buffer cells.  The specification cannot be 
more clear on this point than it is.

I think anyone who has ever designed this stuff knows the
truth of it, and PLX does itself a huge dis-service by just
ignoring the issue and "claiming" compliance.

Go take the dog and pony somewhere were there are not
engineers in the room.   Its very annoying at best.

-David O'Shea
Corollary Inc.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Bill Brisko [SMTP:bbrisko@plxtech.com]
> Sent:	Tuesday, April 13, 1999 2:32 PM
> To:	Mailing List Recipients
> Subject:	PCI Compliance of PLX's PCI 9054 I/O buffers 
> 
> A recent posting to the PCI SIG reflector stated that PLX Technology's PCI
> 
> 9054 I/O universal 3.3V/5V buffers were not compliant to the PCI 2.2 
> specification.
> 
> We want to make it clear that these buffers are compliant to the 
> specification. PLX designed these buffers to be reliable under the worst
> case voltage transient conditions.
> 
> The PCI 9054 has passed all tests of the PCI Compliance Workshop. The PCI 
> compliance checklist, which included a section on the I/O buffer design, 
> has been submitted and recently approved by the PCI SIG (special interest 
> group). Thus, the PCI 9054 is PCI 2.2 compliant and will be listed on the 
> PCI Integrators list when it is updated in the near future.
> 
> If you have any questions on this subject, please feel free to contact our
> 
> Technical Application Engineering Dept at 408-328-3531
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Mike Hopwood 
> VP, World Wide Sales
> 408-328-3505