Claimed as the first eight-port, eight-lane and five-port, five-lane switches by their developer PLX Technology, these two new devices feature power-consumption levels that drop down to a mere 0.8W. They're tiny, too- the switches come in a 15mm by 15mm package.
The PLX ExpressLane PEX 8509 (eight lanes, eight ports, 1.2W) and PEX 8505 (five lanes, five ports, 0.8W) switches offer PCIe connectivity attributes garnered from its third-generation architecture. This architecture features the proprietary Cut-Through design that lowers latency (118ns for the PEX8509, 138ns for the PEX 8505) for maximum switch throughput, three integrated onchip Hot-Plug controllers, true peer-to-peer functionality, and flexible and configurable ports.
"Additional higher-port-count products featuring our third-generation architecture are in development today," says Krishna Mallampati, PLX senior product marketing manager. "Furthermore, PLX is determined to be at the forefront in the launch of PCI Express Base 2.0 specificationcompliant devices."