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 The Benefits of SHB Express |
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The new PICMG 1.3/SHB Express industry specifications define PCI Express communication links from a SHB to a passive backplane. These specifications open the door to literally hundreds of possible combinations of add-on cards and configurations.
As shown below, the signals on the card connector are separated into four different groups:
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Groups A and B provide 20 PCI Express lanes, which can be configured as x16, x8, x4 or x1 links. |
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Group C provides additional interfaces for 2 serial ATA/150 interfaces, 2 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, up to 4 USB 2.0 interfaces and connections to IPMI sensors. This offers a distinct advantage over PICMG 1.0 cards, which typically require extra cables to connect to the backplane. With fewer cables in the chassis, airflow is improved. |
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Group D provides PCI or PCI-X (32-bit/66 MHz) connections. Without any need for PCI Express-to PCI or PCI-X bridges on the backplane, overall system costs and complexity are further reduced. |
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| SHB Express Benefits |
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Solving bandwidth problems with high-speed, high-bandwidth serial links |
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As touched upon previously, SHB Express brings high-speed, point-to-point serial PCI Express connectivity to industrial computing platforms, offering significant performance benefits over previous parallel bus based interconnect technologies thanks to massively enhanced bandwidth and throughput. In addition to maximizing the performance of 64-bit PCI-X devices, which were throttled back under previous standards, it allows support for today's latest PCI Express peripheral devices.
In basic bandwidth terms, SHB Express scales up th ethroughput of it predecessors' standards, offering a peak maximum throughput of up to 10,266MB/s (based on a PCI Express x16 + PCI Express x4 + 32/64 PCI configuration) , almost twenty times bandwidth of the previous standard. |
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PICMG 1.0 |
SHB Express |
Interface |
ISA + PCI (32/64-bit) |
PCI Express (x16 + x4 + PCI) |
Bandwidth |
538MB/s |
10,266 MB/s |
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With such a dramatic boost in overall system bandwidth, SHB E xpress platforms accommodate today's innovative, bandwidth hungry PCI Express cards, dual-core processors and high-performance chipsets, and will have ample headroom for future generations of devices as well. |
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Supporting advanced I/O connectors |
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In addition to supporting faster PCI Express peripheral devices, SHB Express also brings support for high-speed Serial ATA storage devices to the industrial computing platform, and provides a significant boost to hard drive bandwidth support. It also supports other advanced I/O interfaces, including: Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), Intelligent Platform Management Bus (IPMB), USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet.
SHB Express provides additional benefits by bringing Southbridge I/O support to the backplane. This support saves customers the additional cost of expansion cards. It also reduces the number of pin headers on CPU cards, enabling more space for board layout.
There is less cabling inside, which enhances in-chassis airflow, better system thermals and increased system reliability.
Reduced complexity and modular design together result in faster MTTR.
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More efficient power management |
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As opposed to previous standards, which limited choice of compatible power supplies to AT, the SHB Express standard allows support for ATX and BTX power management signals and supports the ACPI power management standard, meaning no special cabling is required. SHB Express enables support for up to 500W of power, meaning systems can work with today's latest power-hungry CPUs. Furthermore, enhanced power management support helps ensure systems run cooler and are less likely to overheat, extending product life and MTBF, as well as reducing RMA costs. |
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Leveraging commercially available,"off-the-shelf" I/O cards |
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Another key advantage of the SHB Express standard is that it enables industrial computing platforms to support a broad range of commercially available, "off-the-shelf" peripheral cards, including the latest high-performance PCI Express x16 graphics cards. Access to commercially available solutions such as these significantly opens up the number of options available to system designers. For example, a PICMG 1.0 system, with only PCI and ISA expansion slots, is unable to support high performance AGP graphics cards, limiting its potential application scope. However, a SHB Express equipped system supports a full range of PCI Express graphics cards, as well as other bandwidth hungry devices mentioned above, significantly broadening the application scope of SHB Express systems. |
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Maintaining backwards compatibility with PCI and PCI-X |
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SHB Express offers a tremendous amount of scalability and flexibility to system designers, allowing support for legacy PCI and PCI-X peripherals in addition to newer PCI Express peripherals. This unparalleled level of flexibility smoothes the transition to SHB Express for system designers, and ensures customers' previous investments in PCI and PCI-X technologies have not been wasted. PCI Express maintains the PCI/PCI-X addressing model so that legacy (current) drivers and software can be used, and eliminates the need to completely scrap an organization's investment in operating systems, application software, and device drivers.
Software and compatibility concerns might even outweigh the significance of hardware and bandwidth issues.
The SHB Express specification has been well thought out, allowing all this technology to coexist with the same systems. The importance of this cannot be overstated. |
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