SOPC
System On Programmable Chip
Via Rocca di Papa, 21 –00179 Roma, Italy
Email: info@geb-enterprise.com - Web: www.geb-enterprise.com

SOPC PCI Express Family
Application
Typical applications are in all types of remote I/O controller with Industrial Motherboard SBC (Mini-Itx, 3.5”SBC…). The
Fpga capability allow the SBC to interface all types of actuators and sensors with optional Hardware and/or Firmware
(on NIOSII) and/or DSP preprocessing and with/without DMA capability to SBC memory. Optional FPGA NIOSII
softcore can support custom instruction and a faster interrupt response (about 1-2us) to support processing/time
critical application.

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Electro medical application
Data acquisition systems with data preprocessing
Electromechanical application
Custom I/O, sensors and Actuators Management
Embedded I/O, remote controlled equipments

Overview
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express (name PCIe) is a scalable I/O serial bus technology set to replace
parallel PCI bus. In the next part of 2004 PCI Express slots began appearing on PC motherboard alongside standard
slots, starting a gradual transition.
PCI Express has several advantages, it can be implemented as a
unifying I/O structure for desktops, mobiles, servers, workstations
and embedded systems, and it's cheaper than PCI or AGP based
system board level implementation. This reduces the overall costs
for consumers. It has been also designed for PCIe software drives
compatibility with existing Operating Systems.
By physical point of view, PCI Express is a point-to-point
connection cabling/wiring. PCIe also allows “hot swapping” or “hot
plugging” and consumes less power than PCI bus. However the
most important feature is its scalability: higher bandwidth can be
achieved by adding "bus lanes," ostensibly future-proofing into the
next decade. The initial rollout of PCI-Express provides three bus
configurations: x1, x4, and x16, which represent the number of
lanes. Each bus lane has a logical bi-directional behavior,
physically implemented by two differential mono-directional RX/TX
signals pairs. The data transfer rate supported by each bus lane is
250 Mbyte/s for each signal pair, corresponding to 500 Mbyte/s for
each bus lane.
Currently, there are two most important PCIe extensions card
available in the PCIe embedded application market: The first one is PCIe MiniCard that has a form factor smaller
than standard PCIe board (about 30x50mm), the second one is the PCIe on cable, which allows to remote the PCIe
pheripheral devices up to 7 meters from the host and without any software add-on.