Chip Links PCI Express And USB

June 11, 2009

The OXPCIe200 PCI Express (PCIe) bridge links a 1x PCI Express host to a pair of USB host interfaces or one USB host interface and an SPI/SRAM interface (see the figure). The bridge also provides access to a serial port and eight generalpur

William G. Wong

The OXPCIe200 PCI Express (PCIe) bridge links a 1x PCI Express host to a pair of USB host interfaces or one USB host interface and an SPI/SRAM interface (see the figure). The bridge also provides access to a serial port and eight generalpurpose I/Os (GPIOs).

The bridge’s dual-USB mode provides one high-speed and one full-speed USB 2.0 host interface. The high-speed interface has a built-in physical layer (PHY). The second requires an external PHY. DMA support is available for all serial interfaces.

A typical application includes a dual- USB expansion card link to USB hard drives. It can also provide access to a range of interfaces that may not be included in the host system. PLX Technology offers bridges that have parallel ports and local bus interfaces as well.

The 3.3-V OXPCIe200 comes in a 9- by 9-mm, 156-ball thin-array plastic package (TAPP). A reference design kit comes on a PC-style PCI Express x1 board. Windows and Linux device drivers are available for the serial port and serial peripheral interfaces (SPIs). Native operating-system (OS) drivers are used with the USB ports. Chip pricing starts at $7.95.

PLX TECHNOLOGYwww.plxtech.com

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.