Integrated Device Technology (IDT), a provider of mixed signal semiconductor products, has introduced new additions to its family of PCI Express (PCIe) Gen2 switching products that reportedly provide line rate throughput and integrate IDT Power Smart technology to solve system-level thermal management challenges in enterprise applications.
According to the company, the three new devices – a 10-lane 4-port switch, 12-lane 3-port switch and 16-lane 4-port switch – provide PCIe Gen2 connectivity and integrate power saving and thermal management features.
IDT claims that the new devices, which come with a temperature sensing functionality, reportedly provide IDT customers with a system-level thermal data necessary to enable optimised power management, load balancing and mitigation of potential thermal-related faults and outages.
The company said that, by utilising power management extensions to the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) PCI Express Base 2.0, the new devices are expected to decrease or eliminate thermal management devices and airflow requirements.
The integration of temperature sensing functionality enables the devices to provide localised thermal feedback for system management. Applications of the temperature sensor allow for monitoring of the thermal conditions of the switch to provide feedback on the relative health or loading of the connected system elements enabling intervention to shift traffic patterns for system resource utilisation and to avert any thermally induced failures.
The new devices consist of an evaluation and development kit for device testing and analysis, and system emulation. Each kit consists of a hardware evaluation board with representative upstream and downstream connectivity, and an IDT-developed, GUI-based software environment that is claimed to enable the designers to tune system and device configurations to meet system requirements.
